The Future of Robots and Robotics

Robots are poised to displace millions of humans in various industries. But they’re nowhere close to being human-like.

It’s days like today that I’m pretty sure the robot uprising isn’t happening any time soon.”

That’s what one of Blake Hannaford’s grad students told him recently after encountering some challenges in the lab. A robotics professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Hannaford knew exactly what he meant.

“I’m never going to rule stuff out,” Hannaford, whose work focuses primarily on robotic surgery, said of potential advances. “But if you look back on science fiction from the ’50s and ’60s and compare it to today, it really missed the mark.”

In fact, you could argue, pop culture in general has ruined robots. Or at least most people’s concept of what robots actually are. According to movies and television, they’re bickering Star Wars chums R2-D2 and C3PO. They’re Star Trek’s superhuman Data and Futurama’s boozy Bender. And, of course, they’re Arnold Schwarzenegger's murderous-turned-virtuous cyborg in the Terminator flicks. That dude’s the biggest robot-cliché of all. Or maybe it’s Robocop. Tough call.

It may not surprise you in the least to learn that robots are actually none of those. Most of them look nothing like humans and all of them — even the more dazzling models — are pretty rudimentary in their abilities. (Sometimes, too, they’re purposely ridiculous — like the “crappy” contraptions of Simone Giertz.)

What Is the Future of Robotics?

That’s not to imply a dearth of progress. At companies and universities around the world, engineers and computer scientists are devising ways to make robots more perceptive and dextrous.

The robotics industry worldwide keeps innovating, combining artificial intelligence and vision and other sensory technologies, according to Analytics Insight magazine. The magazine noted that newer iterations of robots are easier to set up and program than their predecessors. Some notable developments in 2021 include high-tech ocean robots that explore the world underneath the waves; a robot named Saul that shoots UV rays at the Ebola virus to destroy it; and an AI-controlled therapeutic robot that helps caregivers and patients communicate more efficiently, which reduces stress.

More human-like in cognitive ability and, in some cases, appearance. In warehouses and factories, at fast food joints and clothing retailers, they’re already working alongside humans. This one, in Germany, can pick like a champ. They’re even starting to perform functions that have typically been the domain of humans, such as making coffee, caring for the elderly and, crucially, ferrying toilet paper. One Redwood City, California-based startup just got $32 million in Series A funding to further develop its robot waiters. And here’s a neat new schlepper-bot named Gita. They’re even proliferating down on the farm. But no matter which sector they serve, robots are far less advanced than many thought they’d be by now.

Drones Are Robots Too..

Like their industrial third (fourth?) cousins, commercial drones (not to be confused with bomb-dropping military drones) have been around in various forms for many decades. And though they’re constantly being improved, they’re limited performance-wise. In the U.S., these typically modest-sized UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are hampered by strict Federal Aviation Administration regulations that prevent their widespread use, especially for commercial purposes, but that’s slowly changing. According to PwC, the global drone market is currently worth around $127 billion, a valuation that will only rise as adoption increases in a variety of areas, including home package delivery and medical transport.

A March of 2019 New York Times story titled, “Skies Aren’t Clogged With Drones Yet, but Don’t Rule Them Out,” noted that e-commerce drone deliveries have already been green-lighted in China. A similar scenario in the U.S., however, depends on “whether regulators eventually allow drone companies to have autonomous systems in which multiple aircraft are overseen by one pilot and whether they can fly beyond the vision of that pilot.”

One drone company doing just that is Wing Aviation LLC. It’s owned by Google parent Alphabet and helmed by CEO James Burgess, who told the Times, “scale doesn’t concern us right now. We strongly believe that, eventually, we will be able to develop a delivery service for communities that will enable them to transport items in just a few minutes at low cost.”

Besides the drones themselves, Burgess added, Wing is also working on developing an “unmanned traffic management system” to keep track of all the robotic flying machines that might someday seem as common as birds.

Then again, as drone expert James Rogers argued in a recent essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, there are downsides to grand-scale proliferation. Today’s drones already are sparking concerns over safety and privacy. Tomorrow’s will be far better — and therefore far worse. And not merely because there might be geese-like gaggles of them buzzing to and fro.

“Think of today’s nefarious drones as the Model T of dangerous drones,” Rogers wrote. “As drone technologies grow ever more sophisticated, proliferating in an unchecked and under-regulated manner, ‘hostile drone’ incidents will increase in impact and number.”

In predicting that drones will be central to the delivery of “vital goods and services that keep a nation functioning commercially and socially,” Rogers said they’ll be regularly employed for mail delivery, law enforcement, fire response and emergency medical purposes, among other uses.

And each of those sectors, he added somewhat ominously, “will seek to harness the speed and cost-effectiveness of drones, leaving society increasingly vulnerable.”

So, there’s that.