Robot are successfully being used in many applications like military, household work and many industrial jobs. In the next 10 years, I think that robots can bring revolution in the field of medicine and human lifestyle. The killer applications can be as follows:
Medicine:
I think one interesting application of robotics is nano-robots . These are tiny robots which can be injected into the blood stream and which can swim in the human circulatory system. The idea is that the robot detects the cause of disease, travels to the appropriate area and provides a dose of medication directly to the infected area.
Pros: This can give you new directions of research for treating cancers. There is still no cure for many types of cancer. Nano-robots could be the way to go. A December '07 article gives simulations of virtual 3D nano-robots which would help in the research of treating Alzheimer's disease and avoiding the side effects of chemotherapy.
Cons: The major limitation I see of nano-robots is side-effects and risk. Some mal-functioning of the robot inside the blood stream could lead to lethal effects.
Improve LifeStyle:
Another direction is building robots which would do the regular chores of our life like cleaning, laundry, cooking and related activities. An IEEE spectrum article talks about building robots which could be remotely controlled over internet. This would lead to "outsourcing" the robot monitoring work and effectively allow rich countries to import labor -- without the laborer.
Pros: This will help make servants affordable in rich countries and provide more job options in poor countries.
Cons: I think such a robot could make us more lazy instead of improving our quality of life.
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2 comments:
Housework stuff is already here to some extent. The "Roomba" is one such device. :)
Hi Suneil,
Roomba is really cool, but very limited to only vacuum cleaning. I am talking of stuff like cooking, trash, laundry etc. A robot version of a maid :).
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