The robotics industry is developing quicker as ever in the past. There are various prospects in the new emerging robotics technology and one of the most important to observe in the year 2016 will be the delivery drones. There have been various methods of enabling the robots learning. The hardware is getting cheaper and software is developing and becoming more capable. The plans of Google and Amazon to deliver the products with the drones might come true with released regulation for registering drones by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (MIT Technology Review, n. p.). The main components of drones are being improved such as sensors, development of the artificial intelligence, increased data storage, programming and improving the human machine interference (Ahmed, 975). Various drone technologies are being developed in the lab, which is making them more available, cheaper, smaller and more capable. The drone development began in the manufacturing and the technology was prior this century used by the government and army. The United States military has used the technology in various past wars and battles. They are based on the radio frequency front-end with transmitter enabling remote control. With the development of the lithium batteries and possibility of solar power they have increased their capability. The trend of commercialization of the robotic technology that has been developing since the 19th century onward has been seen only in the recent years. The technology has been evolving with reaching the stage of automated landing and takeoff with the elements of the artificial intelligence and usage of software with specified sensors. This has made drones more accurate, safe and also more users friendly. The technology is developing and the flight time is increasing. Drones are improving their recharge time and are using more sustainable energy which is renewable. The technological improvements are resulting in full autopilot, increased battery life, automatic detecting of surrounding objects, better cameras and pictures.
The human replacement is considered as con of the current robotics technology. Other social worries include also the dependence on the technology and loss of skills. It can have an impact on the human relationship or even pose dangerous to the humans in case of miss-function (Abney et al., 10). Social impact could result in loss of jobs and opening new ones. The traditional delivery would be replaced with the automated deliveries. The people involved in those businesses are going to become vulnerable to replacement.
With increased pollution with the robotics the environmental impacts are presented as the disadvantage of the technology. The use of delivery drones could add further to the issue of e-waste which is one of the contemporary problems. The materials used in the drones are other concern (Abney et al., 11). The delivery with drones can be beneficial to the environment with less energy spend for delivery as traditional ways. With the mass usage the delivery drones could also reduce the impact the transport has on the environment with the reducing the transport that is one of the main contributors to the environmental pollution. The drones do not produce the greenhouse gas emissions since they are powered from batteries which could use renewable energy. The environmental impact would depend on the type of energy used to power (Browne et al., 400).
There has been presumed economic inefficiency, with high initial investments. The problem is that drones are small and cannot deliver different products at once and there is also limit of caring size. In comparison to the van that distributes more products at once the drones would not be economically efficient since 15 drones would be needed to replace one van. On the other hand the drones could deliver the shipment personal and rapid and without the middle firms and companies interactions, without human errors and delays (Browne et al., 399).
Work cited
Ahmed, Mateen. Emergining Aspects of Robotics Technology. International Journey of Computer Applications, 27(9). 2011. Web. <http://www.ijcaonline.org/volume27/number9/pxc3874579.pdf>
Browne, Michael, McKinnon, Alan, Piecky, Maja, Whiteing, Anthony. Green Logistics: Improving the Environmental Sustainability of Logistics. USA: Koga Page Limited. 2015. Print.
MIT Technology Review. 5 Robot Trends to Watch for in 2016. Web. <https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545056/5-robot-trends-to-watch-for-in-2016/>.
