Future Of Robotics: The Future Of Robots

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The Future of Robotics Technology is a huge part of modern life. New advances are announced seemingly on a daily basis and many people follow news about the latest technology almost religiously. Robotics is a big part of this advancement, and has the potential to affect many lives. Robots of a sort have already been helping make life easier and costing jobs for decades. Robots help build cars and other manufactured goods, safely dispose of explosives, and even explore other planets. Nearly everyone will be affected by the advance of robotics, whether they make someone’s job safer and easier, make products cheaper and more readily available, or even take over a type of job completely. Robotics is an important field for nearly everyone. One …show more content…

He successfully describes the challenges and possible benefits of robots programmed to operated together in a swarm. Within the section of the article describing these challenges and benefits he quotes James McLurkin, “’It’s not super-exciting learning,’ says James McLurkin, a computer science professor at Rice University, and a leading expert of swarm robotics. ‘They don’t walk up to you and say your name. But without it, you couldn’t coordinate 1,000 robots.’” (Paragraph 5) Later in the article, the author provides quotes from Rodney Brooks and Richard Vaughan, two more people heavily involved in research and development in the field of robotics. (Paragraphs 11 & 17) Overall, the quotes appear reasonable and relevant to the future of …show more content…

Gillis’ facts and quotes don’t match his tone. It is evident from his title (The Robot Invasion) and several sections of the article that Gillis is uncomfortable with the idea of robots being commonplace. At one point the author describes a robot designed to transport a weapon on a battlefield, “Quadrotor teams can be seen doing light shows, navigating obstacle courses and – chillingly – ferrying around a submachine gun.” (Paragraph 6) Bias is obvious in this sentence, there is nothing particularly chilling about simply transporting a weapon. In paragraph ten, Gillis makes a quip about a factory robot stopping what it is doing when interrupted by a human “instead of serving up a flying elbow.” Such safety features are already commonplace on both robots and traditional manufacturing systems; there is nothing novel about a robot being designed with the safety of humans in mind. Gillis even includes a whole paragraph dedicated to describing several popular works in which robots are portrayed in a negative fashion. In his conclusion, Gillis states that mini-robots are “a bit creepy.” Overall it is evident that the author is not happy with the idea of robots being common, but his quotes and evidence provide no back up for his sentiment. The article would be much stronger overall if the author had provided any hard facts backing up his apparent

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