Robots may be used for many tasks in industry. The most common types of robot that resemble this project are robotic arms, with tools attached which are designed to preform specific tasks with great precision. these could be soldering, welding, painting, assembly, or one of many other such applications. They use software similar to the line following buggy from this project to maintain track of their position in relation to their environment.
Robots can be made much faster, stronger, and more precise than humans could ever be, though they also have several key drawbacks which will be discussed in the next section.
http://www.robots.com/faq.php?question=robot+industrial
Morality of Entirely Autonomous Robots
Entirely autonomous robots present a series of advantages and disadvantages. The main advantages are that robots are cheaper, faster, stronger, and more precise than their human equivalents. They can greatly increase a factory's output with a single large initial cost, and then relatively little cost in maintenance compared to human wages until they eventually require upgrading or replacing.
The greatest problem in the immediacy is simply that increased automation in the industrial environment decreases the need for human employees, leading to jobs being lost and leaving skilled manual labourers with no choice but to retrain and their trade skills to be lost in time.
The next problem is that robots lack intuition and human common sense. If a robot detects a problem that it has never encountered before, or if its timing or position is lost by its memory, then the robots actions may become unpredictable. Robots are much stronger than humans and as a result can cause comparatively massive amounts of damage when malfunctioning.
The last of the significant problems with autonomous robots is the issue of emergence. When any system grows to sufficient complexity, emergent behaviours begin to form. As repetitive tasks are preformed, and complex codes are iterated through the robots memory, seemingly random segments of code can eventually begin to interact and interfere with one another resulting in the formation of behavioral patterns which resemble consciousness and personality. In reality most of these emergent behaviours are too unstable to be call either, and simply cause the robot to malfunction, however as systems become more powerful the debate over the problems of emergence will undoubtedly grow far louder.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070222155713.htm
http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/rcalabretta/calabretta.modul2.pdf
Posted by Mark Hawkins
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