by Bob Larson,
We’ve known about the value of robots for over 30 years. The earliest fixed robots have been used in manufacturing products including vehicles at many modern worldwide plants. Medical robots are helping surgeons with non-evasive surgery and reducing hospital or surgery center costs across the world too. Mobile space robots have been used in the last 12 years on Mars and soon on other planets for research, mining, and other beneficial applications.
In the last five years, smart mobile robots are roaming the floors delivering parts, products, medicine, blood samples, waste, etc for manufacturing plants, warehouses, hospitals, research labs, food suppliers, and so on. These mobile robots avoid human or other robot collisions, while delivering light to heavy payloads to their assigned locations with ease.
Besides many manufacturing or warehouse applications, mobile robots are being used at many hospitals across the country for repetitive duties, thus helping to save lives and reducing manual labor costs and time to delivery.
Aethon’s TUG Mobile Robot
One mobile robotics company, Aethon Inc., sells their TUG mobile robot in various industries. Their robots have been shown on 60 Minutes TV program and are in over 200 hospitals across the country.
Amazon’s KIVA Mobile Robot
Amazon, the U.S. largest online retailer, purchased another mobile robotics company, which uses their 15,000 KIVA robots (shown here) for delivering products in their ten distribution warehouses besides selling their robotic systems to other customers.
Eventually, many simple jobs will be eliminated or enhanced by robots. Of course, new jobs will be created for designing or maintaining the robots and robotic systems. This is another benefit of robots and technology in an ever changing world.
~ Bob Larson is a former engineer, photo-journalist, technologist, and Marketing Director at 50 Plus Media Solutions.