Page 34 - Introduction to AI Robotics

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1.3 What Can Robots Be Used For?
try; processing immune suppressant drugs may expose workers to highly
toxic chemicals.
Another example of a task that poses significant risk to a human is space
exploration. People can be protected in space from the hard vacuum, solar
radiation, etc., but only at great economic expense. Furthermore, space suits
are so bulky that they severely limit an astronaut’s ability to perform simple
tasks, such as unscrewing and removing an electronics panel on a satellite.
Worse yet, having people in space necessitates more people in space. Solar
radiation embrittlement of metals suggests that astronauts building a large
space station would have to spend as much time repairing previously built
portions as adding new components. Even more people would have to be
sent into space, requiring a larger structure. the problem escalates. A study
by Dr. Jon Erickson’s research group at NASA Johnson Space Center argued
that a manned mission to Mars was not feasible without robot drones capable
of constantly working outside of the vehicle to repair problems introduced
by deadly solar radiation. 51 (Interestingly enough, a team of three robots
which did just this were featured in the 1971 film, Silent Running,as wellas
by a young R2D2 in The Phantom Menace.)
Nuclear physics and space exploration are activities which are often far re-
moved from everyday life, and applications where robots figure more promi-
nently in the future than in current times.
The most obvious use of robots is manufacturing, where repetitious ac-
tivities in unpleasant surroundings make human workers inefficient or ex-
pensive to retain. For example, robot “arms” have been used for welding
cars on assembly lines. One reason that welding is now largely robotic is
that it is an unpleasant job for a human (hot, sweaty, tedious work) with
a low tolerance for inaccuracy. Other applications for robots share similar
motivation: to automate menial, unpleasant tasks—usually in the service in-
dustry. One such activity is janitorial work, especially maintaining public
rest rooms, which has a high turnover in personnel regardless of payscale.
The janitorial problem is so severe in some areas of the US, that the Postal
Service offered contracts to companies to research and develop robots capa-
ble of autonomously cleaning a bathroom (the bathroom could be designed
to accommodate a robot).
Agriculture is another area where robots have been explored as an eco-
nomical alternative to hard to get menial labor. Utah State University has
been working with automated harvesters, using GPS (global positioning sat-
ellite system) to traverse the field while adapting the speed of harvesting
to the rate of food being picked, much like a well-adapted insect. The De-