Robots more than two metres tall, with six legs or magnetic feet are capable of doing tasks that once required a human, but roboticists say the capable machines will not take away people’s jobs – yet.
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Brisbane is hosting the world’s biggest robotics conference, the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, where some of the creations from CSIRO’s Data61 Robotics headquarters at the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies at Pullenvale will be showcased.
CSIRO Data61 senior principal research scientist Nicolas Hudson said legged systems, such as a 2.25-metre-tall robot called MAX, looked like a giant daddy long legs spider and was capable of going places people couldn’t.
“Robotics has an amazing opportunity to augment what people can do and actually assist workers and enhance their ability to do new things,” he said.
Mr Hudson said there was always the possibility robots could take away human jobs and that fear was prevalent.
“Part of the really important part of doing research here is to make sure that unfolds in a really positive way for Australia,” he said.
“There are lots of people around the world developing robotics technology and how that is incorporated into the workplace and how we can use that to enhance the opportunities for people in Australia and grow the economy that's what is so important about doing research here today.”
CSIRO Data61 robotics and autonomous systems group leader Fred Pauling said field robots were about actually doing things in the real world.
“A lot of the robots you’ve seen previously live indoors, they have limited functionality, so we need to actually make robots to operate in the field,” he said.
“Robots need to actually help for productivity reasons, they could do some of the more dangerous jobs humans should not be doing and those robots need to be really reliable and be able to survive in these harsh conditions and operate reliably over a long time.
Mr Pauling said he did not think robots taking away jobs from humans was a worry.
“As a team, humans and robots together can be very productive,” he said.
“Robots are there to provide a productivity boost to do repetitive tasks at a very high precision and humans can actually take on a lot more of the strategic thinking roles.
“We can use robots in more and more situations where for example humans have to do dirty, dull, dangerous jobs now robots can start to take on some of those things and help people to be more efficient.”
The International Conference on Robotics and Automation will be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on May 21-25. More information can be found here.
