Technology and Robots

Technology plays a big role in our lives. It has changed the way we view the world, ourselves, and others. Without technology, who knows what our lives would be like. Every day there are researchers working on new technology to help us make things easier in this world.

They made nerves that are similar to ones in our brain that help with problem solving. They tested these nerves with a robot in a maze and noticed that it was making progress when the robot would turn around and find another way out when it would hit a dead end. Once they master this invention they could use it to make a robot exactly the same as a human.

Other researchers have focused on recycling plastic and upgrading plastic into other products, or converting it to a vapor with heat, which, when met with a catalyst, can be turned into the desired fuel-like product. "The innovative part of the experiment is the catalyst," said author Mingheng Li. "The catalyst is critical to this particular pyrolysis process, because it only requires one step to get to the desired fuel product at relatively mild temperatures." The catalytic process used in this experiment on plastic waste could also be used to process other wastes, such as manure, municipal solid waste, and used engine oil, to make usable energy products. Scientists at ETH Zurich have built a plant that can produce carbon-neutral liquid fuels from sunlight and air. The next goal will be to take this technology to industrial scale and achieve competitiveness. A team of researchers led by Aldo Steinfeld, Professor of Renewable Energy Sources at ETH Zurich, have been operating the mini solar refinery on the roof of ETH's Machine Laboratory building in Zurich over the last two years. "This plant successfully demonstrates the technical feasibility of the entire thermochemical process for converting sunlight and ambient air into drop-in fuels. The system operates stably under real-world solar conditions and provides a unique platform for further research and development," says Steinfeld.

Researchers from USC Marshall helped Greece with a robot they made to prevent covid-19 from spreading in Greece. The robot uses real-time data to identify high-risk visitors for testing. Evidence shows the algorithm caught nearly twice as many asymptomatic infected travelers as would have been caught if Greece had relied on only travel restrictions and randomized COVID testing. The roboto, named Eva, helped Greek authorities sort through massive amounts of data provided by tourists, such as where they planned to stay and visit, as well as the demographics of each traveler. Researchers then programmed Eva to sift through the information and develop profiles of the travelers who were likely infected but asymptomatic and needed testing. With Eva, Greece has tested about 17% of the estimated 41,000 households arriving in or passing through the country every day and nearly doubled the number of infections that a typical randomized testing approach would have captured.

Robots can deliver food on a college campus and hit a hole in one on the golf course, but even the most sophisticated robot can't perform basic social interactions that are critical to everyday human life. MIT researchers have now incorporated certain social interactions into a framework for robotics, enabling machines to understand what it means to help or hinder one another, and to learn to perform these social behaviors on their own. Enabling robots to exhibit social skills could lead to smoother and more positive human-robot interactions. For instance, a robot in an assisted living facility could use these capabilities to help create a more caring environment for elderly individuals. "Robots will live in our world soon enough and they really need to learn how to communicate with us on human terms. They need to understand when it is time for them to help and when it is time for them to see what they can do to prevent something from happening. This is very early work and we are barely scratching the surface, but I feel like this is the first very serious attempt at understanding what it means for humans and machines to interact socially," says Boris Katz, principal research scientist and head of the InfoLab Group in (CSAIL).

Robots will forever be in our lives. It's interesting how many groups of researchers create so much advanced technology. Technology and robots make our lives much easier and all thanks to the researchers that create such great inventions.