Robots can be used to help fight crime, deployed in high-risk areas without endangering human lives, boost manufacturing and also be programmed to run mass-transit vehicles if workers go on strike. So said the Trinidad-born Dr Sanjeev Seereeram, electrical, computer and systems engineer and senior vice president of research and development at Scientific Systems Company (SSC).
He was speaking at the opening ceremony of NIHERST’s Caribbean Youth Science Forum 2013 (CYSF), at the Faculty of Engineering, The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, Monday. Seereeram said, “It is a lot easier to let a robot take the hit than to subject a human. We’re all sensitive to human losses in dangerous situations.
“The interesting thing is to think of robots as augmented humans. You probably want to send a robot in to do dull, dirty or dangerous work. Dull being repetitive work in manufacturing, dirty and dangerous as in a nuclear fallout, a collapsed mine, toxic landfill where there are dangerous gases and you need to send in a robot to investigate and not put people at risk. “Robots also make for a very good platform for persistent surveillance. It's very expensive to operate helicopters and aircraft with pilots.”
Seereeram, whose résumé includes working on the Cassini Saturn space probe, Mars Sample Return Mission, Phoenix Robotic Servicer Programme and the robot on board the international space station, said other applications were possible for robots in T&T such as forest-fire monitoring, search and rescue, praedial larceny and coastal surveillance, environment monitoring, remote ocean surveillance and automating public transport vehicles.
He said the logistics for an unmanned system such as drones in remote areas were a lot cheaper and more cost-effective because of the technology available today. Unmanned aircraft could deliver rescue supplies or medical equipment to remote or inaccessible locations where it would be impossible for conventional aircraft to land, he said.
Minister of Science and Technology Dr Rupert Griffith said robotic technology was still very new and was utilised more in some advanced countries, but it was inevitable that T&T would need robots to do certain tasks. Griffith agreed that robots were better at doing repetitive activities such as automotive assembly and manufacturing.
But, he said, “There will always be the need for the human input. God in his wisdom created human beings. Nobody could replicate a human being.” NIHERST'’s Caribbean Youth Science Forum runs until tomorrow.