by Mike Stanley

Created on: August 01, 2009   Last Updated: August 02, 2009

Despite spending most of my professional career in IT, one of my three degrees is in automated manufacturing with a focus on robotics. I spent two years working with robots and helped the college upgrade the existing robot to a newer one. Working with a robot as I have makes you realize just how helpful they can be.

While the primary application that I studied robots for was manufacturing, the principles are the same for any environment. We use robots in manufacturing to do jobs that are repetitive, and/or to dangerous to be performed by people. Robots can do the same task over and over without getting bored or tired, and the result is virtually the same each time. For research, this type of devotion to consistent results is very welcomed, and robots are sometimes used to duplicate processes that require external manipulation. A less scientific, but very public example of this type of use is in the popular TV show Mythbusters. In the show, makeshift robots and automated devices are used in attempt to create consistent results to prove or disprove a myth.

Today, robots are being used more and more often in science research, and one of the best examples is in underwater exploration, and space exploration. Remote Operated Vehicles or ROVs are used to explore the depths of the ocean for sea life and wreckages. The ROVs are able to go where it is hard or impossible for humans to swim to, and allow them to handle dangerous sea life without endangering humans. Likewise, space probes allow us to see into space while sitting safely back at Earth and studying the results of those pictures and samples taken. Robots enable us to safely "go where no man has gone before" to quote Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise. Robots are one of the fastest advancing technologies that are helping to blur the lines between science and science fiction. They truly enable us to see new frontiers and give us a peek at what was once dark and unknown territory.

How do robots help us to discover? There are so many ways; it is beyond the scope of an article to count the ways. For that, you could fill a book. One thing it for sure, robots have helped us advance in many ways, and they continue to help us in new ways all the time. Robots are the key to our future.

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