Introduction
Robots and automation are spreading rapidly everywhere these days with their widespread applications in multiple domains of almost every sector. COVID became one of those major factors that are responsible for the explosive growth of digitization and automation in industries much earlier than expected, as people were unable to move out of their houses for work because of global lockdowns. Need is the mother of inventions and we saw the rise of some pretty new concepts like work from home and study from home leading to the origination of thousands of new technologies, applications, websites, startups and businesses mainly focused around the lesser requirement of human interventions especially in high-risk areas hence more automation and digitization of as many processes as possible took place in organisations all around the world. Though COVID was the reason for this booming expansion and progress, COVID also became the first and the most important target by Automation and Robots. There are many innovative ways in which Robots all around the world helped in fighting this unprecedented humanitarian crisis of the highly communicable and fatal disease COVID 19. Here, I am going to discuss with you the 3 most important incidents when robots proved to be a boon to human society that was scared and was facing huge uncertainty and ample amounts of pain in this unique pandemic. Let us start.
Here are 3 examples of Robots helping in pandemic
1.Drones carried samples for testing of Covid 19
In such special times, when our corona warriors were overloaded with the work of such a huge population of billions of people at one time to test, cure and take care of, drones not only helped in lessening the workload by carrying blood and sputum samples for Covid testing but also helped in maintaining social distancing and slowing down the spread of the deadly disease.
- With the help of these quadcopters, the process of testing became quick and more efficient.
- They saved a lot of human lives by replacing humans in those high-risk areas by being best friends in such tough times.
- Robots used to kill coronavirus by disinfecting
Disinfection was getting done in numerous hospitals and places of high risk in China and Europe during the destructive Pandemic by the use of Ultraviolet Light Disinfection (UVD) Robots manufactured and shipped by Denmark. The company did 5 times more supply of UVD in 2020 than planned during the project in 2019. In February 2021, it sold the same numbers of UVD robot units every single day that it used to sell in full-year before 2020.
- The exponential increase of robots and automation happened because of Covid and the adoption of new technologies became a little easier.
- Continuous and exhaustive disinfection of hospitals to make them free of coronavirus helped save a lot of lives of corona warriors too.
- At Supermarkets, Robots were taking orders
While we could not step out of our homes and as food, water and medicines are something that can never be ignored and deleted from our lives, online portals did help a lot for delayed services and products. But products and services that we need in an emergency can’t wait for long to reach us and robots helped us in staying away from this infectious disease that could be spread by human interaction. At Giant Eagle, Robots were taking orders from customers while disinfecting and sanitizing contact surfaces every other minute. Many of the grocery stores adopted these robotic contactless options and also asked customers to use online payment methods instead which also helped in replacing cashiers across the stores as being a cashier in such a contagious environment is one of the most dangerous jobs. Robots performed a variety of tasks including preparing orders, performing inventory checks, bagging, delivering and interacting as well to provide a safer and speedier shopping experience.
- Walmart deployed self-driving machines in thousands of its stores to deliver groceries to customers during the pandemic.
- Automatic mopping and cleaning robots were also deployed by many of the shopping stores to minimise the presence of humans as much as possible.
Conclusion
Besides these, many unique and creative ways were discovered by many intelligent humans around the world to make the use of robots in providing aid to us during the Pandemic. The average utilization of Brain-powered (Artificial Intelligence empowered) Robots in industries has increased 400% since January 2020. The WORLD ROBOTICS CHAMPIONSHIP 2021 which is going to be organised by TECHNOXIAN in India in October is also expected to witness a lot of experimental and unconventional Robots entirely dedicated to helping in COVID Pandemic in various unimaginable ways at THE INNOVATION CHALLENGE of the International level series of competitions. Let us see what more can these Robots do to help us. Do comment below to share with us your ideas of putting robots to action in providing aid to us during the COVID Pandemic. Are you also planning to make a COVID Warrior Robot and participate in the championship? You can put your queries here in this regard and I will answer them for you.