2023-06-23 06:15:00
when it premiered Blade Runner Back in 1982, few thought that the film’s futuristic predictions would end up coming true. In the film, robot engineers are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining replicants humanoids. In 2023, these jobs have an equivalent in industry, where technicians work on the development of digital tools, such as automation or robots, for various industrial and service applications, in addition to ensuring their correct operation.
Robotics has also become a key factor in labor transformation, driving automation and collaboration between humans and robots in various tasks.
«Robots free us from certain more tedious and repetitive tasks, and allow us to focus on those that imply a greater value, which are those that only people can do, and which in most cases are linked to making more complex decisions”, explains Emilia Martínez Serrano, director of Technologies for the optimization of assets in Repsol Technology Labthe innovation center of the multi-energy company.
The robots that Repsol is implementing in its operations help to optimize processes, improve efficiency, productivity and guarantee the security.
“We have robotic arms and we work with logistics robots that allow us to handle samples, carry out inspections and work in environments that may pose a risk to people,” adds Martínez Serrano.
An example of how reality has reached –or surpassed– fiction are the drone pilots that appear in Avatar (2009). James Cameron’s film presents a world in which humans control drones to explore and colonize distant planets.
Today, the drone specialists They are employed in a variety of activities, from aerial photography and precision agriculture to infrastructure inspection. Another much more recent film that delves into the use of drones is Top Gun: Maverick (2022). The work invites us to reflect on the role of humans in an increasingly technological age.
Other futuristic professions that seemed exclusive to fictional movies and that today are already implemented in companies are specialists in exoskeleton, like the ones that appear in Aliens (1986), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) o Iron Man (2008).
In the logistics industry, they are used exoskeletons to improve the strength and resistance of workers in loading and unloading tasks, thus reducing the risk of injury and increasing safety and productivity.
One of the companies that is progressively introducing autonomous robots in its logistics centers is Amazon, while other companies –mainly in the automotive sector– such as Ford, Audi or General Motors, use or are testing exoskeletons or have introduced bionic suits on some of their assembly lines to prevent their employees from being injured while working.
AI to improve decision making
The artificial intelligence –yes, like that Spielberg film in 2001– it has become a fundamental tool in many industries. The best known are the companies that develop the conversational AIlos chatbots with which you can interact, but companies from all sectors are exploring different applications of generative AI in processes in which it could provide differential value both for the company and for people.
“New advances in the development of generative AI they represent an unprecedented potential to transform the productive capacity of companies and their employees”, points out Juan José Casado, director of Data and Analytics at Repsol.
AI helps obtain and classify information for a better decision making, management and generation of documentation. It also serves the creation of multimedia content, the development of intelligent assistants or the generation of code to program technological solutions, among others.
However, “the challenge in the industry is not so much how to incorporate robots into processes, but rather how we are going to work in our day-to-day work by collaborating with new robots equipped with AI,” concludes Martínez Serrano.
We will see if the virtual assistants and bots with increasingly “human” conversational capacity, they evolve to the level of Her (2013), a film in which the protagonist falls in love with the female voice of a new operating system. Meanwhile, the world of work is evolving, as many professions and business opportunities continue to emerge to turn what until recently was fiction into everyday life.
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