Artists invented the word ‘robot’, but now robots are becoming artists, or at least assistants, themselves. As robots get smarter, artists will find more and more uses for them, particularly in sculpture.
Highly trained dancers provide insights for researchers helping design improved rehab programs for people with mobility impairments. The next step could include rehab robots as dance partners.
By 2167, genetically designed, digitally enhanced humans with Internet-connected brains will live with intelligent machines in a transformed environment and maybe even among the stars.
Rethinking work is crucial for industrialised and emerging economies, where job losses are being felt even in the presence of substantial, although diminishing, economic growth.
While there is currently interest interest in artificial intelligence, it offers limited achievements, such as the autonomous car. Tomorrow, machines will learn alone and forge solutions.
For robots to be most useful when working alongside humans, we’ll have to figure out how to make robots that can literally lend us a hand when our own two are not enough.
Thorsten Wuest, West Virginia University; David Romero, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, and Johan Stahre, Chalmers University of Technology
People will still be needed on factory floors, even as robots become more common. Future operators will have technical support and be super-strong, super-smart and constantly connected.
Robots are strange creatures, and not only because they might steal our jobs. We humans actually have good reason to be a little worried about these machines.