Robots – programmable machines capable of carrying out a series of complex actions automatically. These are probably one of the most important technological machines ever invented. We have made great advances with the development of robots, but are still at the beginning of a fascinating journey.
Already in 1920, Carel Capek found the word “Robot”. The author described human-like machines and didn’t know how to call them, until his brother Josef had the wonderful idea of calling them Robots, meaning slave in Czech. George Devol patented the first programmable manipulator in 1954, which counts as the birth of the development of industrial robots, as, from then on, fast, huge advances have been made.
Today, we do not only use robots in industry. There’s a hotel in Tokyo, where service is pretty much done only by Robots. Human-like robots, so-called androids, work as receptionists, robotic cubes wake up the customers and another machine sorts out all the luggage and brings it to one’s room.
If this is already happening somewhere around the world, I can only imagine how crazy the future will be:
I believe robots will assist us in so many different ways. We’ll be sitting in chairs, which move through the air, all day and there will be machines helping us to eat our artificially produced food and we won’t have to clean our houses anymore, as there will be robots doing that for us, but our houses won’t just be simple houses, they will have a voice and tell us when there’s someone at the door, which will open on one’s command. There probably won’t be any agriculture left, but that’s absolutely fine, as we’ll be eating artificial food that tastes like junk food but is actually very good for us.
Hold on? All this reminds me of a movie! Wall-E! In Wall-E all human beings live on a giant space ship flying around the cosmos, because they left planet earth in an unlivable state.
Will our world look like this soon, because we start to accustom to robots doing everything for us? Will we stop taking care of our home planet completely, just because robots and machines will do and produce everything for us? Will the further development of robotic machines ruin our planet, and therefore us, or will it result in better standards of living for everyone and maybe even safe our planet?
Well, we will not know until robots have completely taken over our lives, which might just not be tomorrow!