The robots are coming and their presence will eventually bridge the digital-physical divide, dramatically impacting human life, experts say.

While a lot of attention has focused on how robots could hurt employment by replacing some human jobs, there are a number of positive ways robots may impact human life.

Here are some ways robots may change your life in the future.

As robots become more social, humans will encounter more and more robots in the service industry, said Illah Nourbakhsh, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and author of Robot Futures.

At first, humans will increasingly encounter robots more via telecommunications and it will become harder for them to distinguish robots from humans. And eventually, robots will begin to replace more service jobs-like waiting tables.

There are already novelty robots in some places, including Japan where robots act as servers, taking and delivering orders.

However, unlike a human waiter, a robot server will have all kinds of information about you before you even tell it what you want. Because robots will be connected to the Internet, they will be able to access all of the information that is available about you online to predict what you may like to order.

Robots used for medical purposes will also dramatically change the way we treat ailments. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are experimenting with using robots that are just millimeters in size to perform heart surgery. Engineers at Autodesk are also working with medical researchers to help them develop nano-robots that could be injected into cancer patients to selectively kill cancer cells.

For people with impairments like a spinal cord injury or partial paralysis caused by a stroke, robotics may also be able to assist in the rehabilitation process.

Researchers at Columbia University are studying how robotic exoskeletons can be used to help patients walk again. Basically, researchers have found that the robotic exoskeleton can help partially paraplegic patients retrain brain cells so that they can learn to walk again, or at least improve their gait.
Robots have played a role in the military for some time. But in the future we will see a growing presence of robots used in the law enforcement, as well.

The robot maker Robotex, which is partially backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, has deployed its AVATAR robots across the U.S.

SWAT teams, first responders and other law enforcement use the devices to quickly assess dangerous situations to help them engage in action.

But soon, police officials won`t be the only ones using robots to monitor their surroundings. Telepresence robots - which are robots used to allow humans to be in more than one place - will enable humans to monitor situations in different places from remote locations.

Robotex also makes robots for people to use at their home so they can see what is going on while they are not there. But people won`t just use telepresence robots to check security at their house, they will also use the technology for work and for entertainment, Nourbakhsh said.

If you think humans are distracted by their smartphones now, wait until they have a remote robot that they can tap into and control from anywhere at anytime from their handheld device.

`Today we are already not all there, but telepresence robotics makes more compelling ways to visit your home, an other places when you are not there,` Nourbakhsh said.

One use for a telepresence robot would be be to beam yourself to work from a remote location. Another scenario for use is for entertainment, Nourbakhsh said.

According to Google, we are only about three to five years away from an autonomous car that is roadworthy. But before driverless cars are able to freely chauffeur humans around, there is still some work to do, Nourbakhsh said.

`There are absolutely critical infrastructures that haven`t been designed yet,` he said.

However, once the right structures are in place, there is the potential to significantly reduce traffic accidents, pollution and energy consumption.

A number of schools in the U.S. are already adopting robots into the classroom, not as replacements for teachers, but as teaching assistants. And it won`t be long before robots play a bigger role in the educational system, experts say.

Robots can be programmed to teach just about anything, making them an effective classroom tool.


BDST: 1714 HRS, MAR- 17, 2016
Edited by:  Sharmina Islam, Lifestyle Editor