Technology Development

In a startling revelation, President Barack Obama recently announced a $70 million budget exclusively for funding the research and development of next generation robots. These robots would work alongside humans in all fields from factories, hospitals to the battlefield. Addressing the crowd at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Centre, he congratulated them on their achievement in developing peaceful robots and showed concern for new and hi-tech achievements in this field. His remarks were aimed at uniting government, academy and industry for nourishing this new idea in the form of a $500 million Advanced Manufacturing Partnership effort.

It is expected that the National Robotics Initiative will group NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture and many other such organisations for achieving the goal of developing “co-robots” that would work alongside humans in a peaceful way. The programme will be aimed at carrying out the fundamental research in this field for the development of robots and will include every aspect including manufacturing and deployment. Studies for the long term implications of inducting robots in man’s everyday life will also be a part of this initiative. With such a huge amount being invested for the purpose, it would be interesting to see if it’s actually worth it and not just another effort for developing military bots.