10 Things Robots Can Now Do

While robots haven't yet taken over our daily lives as classic science fiction writers imagined, robotics has made significant advances in the last few years. From playing music to cooking world cuisine to mercilessly killing anyone in a given area, today's robots are capable of much more than we think.

10. Playing live music

If you look, How this the robot plays a unique Soviet-era instrument, theremin , played solely by hand gestures in the air, you would think that it was simply programmed to perform these movements. Interestingly, this is not the case - the by researchers Kyoto University Graduate School of Informatics, the robot listens to music and plays it entirely on its own. It can even play with other musicians, using visual cues and tempo changes depending on what its partner is playing.

This is just one of the many ways roboticists around the world are experimenting with robots and live music. You can find plenty of videos online about rock- groups robots , which can play as well, if not better, than real musicians. Robots are inherently more durable and technically advanced, since you can design them the way you want, and they don't get tired.

However, robots still cannot create music like humans, because they still use the human brain and its special way of perceiving music.

9. Kill tumors

Until recently, the idea that tiny microscopic robots could perform complex surgical procedures was largely confined to the realm of science fiction. That is no longer the case, as advances in both robotics and nanotechnology have led to the proliferation of medical nanorobots in the last few years. One can only imagine the potential medical applications of microscopic machines that can be programmed to do anything.

While it will be some time before all of them are realized, today's nanobots can already do a lot. In a study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology still in 2018 , researchers have developed microscopic bots that can swarm tumor cells and cut off their blood supply by clotting their blood. The nanorobots, created by folding DNA fragments (a technique known as DNA origami) and a blood-clotting enzyme called thrombin, have been successfully tested in mice .

Of course, humans and mice have some… fundamental differences in anatomy, so it will be some time before nanorobots can completely eradicate cancer. However, the research is still in its early stages, and these results are promising.

8. Rock-paper-scissors

Janken — a robot named after the Japanese version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. It is usually used as a method of making a fair choice between two options, much like flipping a coin, except there is nothing fair about the robot. Developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo, Janken is not just good at the game — it is perhaps the only player with a consistent 100% win rate.

It may seem like Janken is very good at making predictions, but that's not really what he does. It's just reaction on the enemy's gesture using high-speed cameras, fast enough to seem instantaneous.

While it’s clear that Janken can’t be taken seriously in a professional Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament — since it’s technically cheating — response time and reaction speed are constantly being studied in robotics. This is especially applicable in areas like autonomous vehicles, where response times need to be as close to zero as possible.

7. Assemble IKEA furniture

ikea store

This one may not seem as impressive as some of the other robots on this list, but it’s still a job that many people struggle with. Assembling IKEA furniture is a universally hated chore that, for some reason, is incredibly difficult to get right, even with detailed illustrated instructions. You only need to Google “IKEA Furniture Assembly Tips” or something similar to really understand the scale of the problem.

Luckily, engineers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a robot that can assemble any IKEA product you throw at it. It's a basic setup, complete with two arms and grippers, that can assemble a chair in less than 20 minutes .

While it's not commercially available at the moment and still requires a learning curve with every new product it encounters, so it doesn't really help anyone, it's an ongoing project. The team is currently working on to teach robot to assemble something by reading the operating instructions or even just looking at the final product.

6. Police

If you go to Dubai, you're likely to encounter a robot police officer you may not have seen before. While it's not actually armed or capable of any violence — as right now you can only use it to report crimes, pay fines, and do other minor clerical tasks — it's part of a disturbing trend around the world.

And not only in Dubai: from Singapore to India And Israel police departments are increasingly turning to robots for policing work. Crowd control is one of the most alarming potential applications of robotics, and we can be sure that robots will be widely used in the future. With riots and protests becoming more and more common Around the world, countries are looking for innovative, modern ways to control their citizens.

5. Self-assembly

Self-assembling robots are part of the larger field of modular robotics, which is about designing individual robotic parts that work together in real time, rather than the fixed-shape robots we are used to seeing today. In fact, this is the future, allowing engineers to create entirely new types of dynamic machines depending on what they need at the time, something like a self-healing, self-assembling T-800. from movies about Terminator .

In its current form, all this is far in the future. , although we have the first prototypes of what these modular robots will look like. M-Blocks is an ongoing project at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where they have developed 16 50 x 50 mm cube bots that can communicate with each other and perform simple tasks such as self-organizing into a line and moving. SMORES-EP is another similar project at the University of Pennsylvania, although their bots are a little more advanced and have greater mobility, as each module comes with its own set of wheels .

4. Parkour

Even though almost everyone has heard of Boston Dynamics and their quest to build the most terrifying robot ever, their machines are on any list of modern robotics achievements. Atlas, perhaps their most advanced humanoid robot, recently passed obstacle course with a backflip at the end. While it may not seem like much at first glance, before Atlas it was nearly impossible to get a robot to move the way we do.

Although Atlas there may be many civilian applications, It will definitely be deployed on the battlefield someday, as Boston Dynamics has previously developed militarized robot dogs for DARPA and regularly works with military-grade prototypes. From a practical standpoint, there is no real, everyday benefit to developing robots that mimic our walk or run, other than to induce pure terror in the minds of those they run toward.

3. Cooking

Many people consider cooking to be one of those jobs that robots can’t do. The most obvious problem is their lack of real taste buds, as a robot can’t really know how good – or bad – something tastes. It also requires a surprisingly high level of dexterity – just think about how many types of unique gestures it takes to make something as simple as a sandwich from scratch.

Unfortunately, at least for professional chefs, this may not last long. In fact, we already have the first fully functioning robot chef on the market, even if it is too expensive to replace human chefs anytime soon. Robotic kitchen developed by London robotics firm Moley Robotics , worth more than $300,000 , is really just a fancy modern kitchen with two robotic arms hanging from the top. It can cook anything on its own, and the company plans to add a total of 5,000 recipes to it over time.

2. Perform the operation

The idea that robots would one day be used to perform surgeries on humans sounded wild just a few years ago, but it is no longer the case. Hospitals Around the world, robotic surgeries are increasingly being chosen, performed remotely by real surgeons operating a specialized, state-of-the-art robot.

As you can guess, it gives a lot advantages compared to the traditional method. Usually, surgeons opt for open surgery, in which they cut into nearby areas to see what they are doing. With a remote-controlled robot equipped with enough cameras, the same procedure can now be performed much more accurately with a smaller surgical incision, reducing the risk of infection or bleeding.

Admittedly, the procedure is not automated and still requires the involvement of a human operator, which would probably always be the case for complex, intricate surgical procedures. However, for routine procedures automated robots may be a viable option and we already have prototypes , which can perform some automated procedures on animals.

1. Kill

We know what you're thinking, and it's not what it sounds like — it's actually even more terrifying. Giving robots the ability to kill people is something that movies and books usually warn us about, even though behind the scenes they're long out of production and in the deployment phase.

The first and perhaps only documented case of a military robot assassinating a political target occurred in Iran on November 27, 2020, when a robotic sniper gun powered by artificial intelligence was used to assassinate its top nuclear scientist. Although it was never officially acknowledged, the assassination was reportedly carried out by Israeli Mossad operatives using a remote-controlled, AI-powered sniper robot placed in a car, as revealed in a report by New York Times . Iranian investigators say the AI was so precise that it targeted the scientist and spared his wife and others around him, possibly with the help of software for facial recognition .