Social robots have often been promoted as how to offer the sick and therefore the elderly the support they lack. Now a Hong Kong robotics company wants to make a military of caring robots to supply comfort, solace, and healthcare to people isolated during the coronavirus pandemic.
Meet Sophia
Hanson Robotics, led by founder and CEO David Hanson, says it plans to mass-produce its social humanoid robot Sophia within the half of 2021. Three other robots are going to be manufactured to assist people to deal with the pandemic’s effects, said Hanson, and to inspire a future “where machines might become our friends. Sophia is being purposed for caregiver and customer service duties, but first achieved international recognition at the South by Southwest Festival in 2016, happening to be awarded a task because the United Nations’ first non-human innovation champion.
Many of my previous robots were hand-built, said Hanson. However, now we’ve begun scaling the manufacturing of Sophia so we will make hundreds and thousands of units, and use this because of the foundation for several other forms of characters. The firm will develop a fanatical healthcare robot called Grace but is additionally targeting industries including retail and aviation. Sophia and Hanson an AI (AI) program are unique by being so human-like added Hanson. That is often so useful during these times where people are so terribly lonely and socially isolated.
Saying Thank You To AI
Robots with AI abilities can engage in and understand conversation through tongue processing. Humanoid robots, or androids, also use technology that permits them to mimic human facial expressions and participate in everyday interactions, meaning they might become readily accepted in people’s homes and workplaces.
Engineers are busy adding functionality that will allow robots to require temperature or measure pulse. Sophia also has the power to steer an exercise program, which is probably going to offer the unit mass appeal. Technologists and roboticists also say that robots are perfectly positioned to require up duties that are either dull or where there are risks for humans, like disinfecting hospitals or public spaces, food and drugs delivery, screening for disease, and conducting lab tests.
Combining robots with AI and other agents–like chatbots or avatars–is seen as how to manage situations just like the coronavirus public health emergency during a safer and more efficient way–from distributing information to advanced biology and drug development. As automation is haunted more widely in healthcare than a number of the roles presumably to get replaced robotically include one-to-one care and administrative jobs. Care workers, nursing assistants, and pharmacy technician jobs appear most in danger.
Robots On The Increase
One of the upward trends during the pandemic is automation, with accelerated robotics programs in many industries. Executives’ attitudes look to possess shifted from reducing costs through automation to gaining a competitive advantage. The use of robots was actually on the increase before the impact of coronavirus, with a jump of 32% in sales of professional service robots, totaling over $15 billion worldwide, between 2018 and 2019. Almost half (47%) were sales of medical robots.
But despite the outward appearance of robots like Sophia, there are many, including leading AI scientists, who aren’t impressed with the extent of technology on display. it’s still time to start production, said social robotics expert Johan Hoorn, describing the present level of innovation as feeble. CPUs that overheat, display screen problems, and other machine glitches make it unlikely that androids like Sophia will achieve world domination. The pandemic may make it easier to plug robots, agrees Hoorn, but It’s still too young during a sense.
