The modern workplaces are incorporating AI and robots for smoothening business operations

The advent of Industry 4.0 changed the way industries perform, by transforming them digitally. Businesses embraced automation in workplaces to enhance productivity and reduce operational costs. Automation is a key ingredient to enhance business growth and agility in the current scenario. There have been speculations about AI and robots taking over humans and emerging as a threat to human civilization. But these technologies have had a great impact on building the economy and increasing revenue.

Adaptation of robots is a crucial step in achieving fully automated workspace. Robots have been feared for their capacity to fully replicate human intelligence. Many industries across the globe have already incorporated robots into their work environments to minimise labour and maximise work efficiency. A press release by International Federation of Robotics says, "the new World Robotics 2020 Industrial Robots report shows a record of 2.7 million industrial robots operating in factories around the world – an increase of 12%. Sales of new robots remain on a high level with 373,000 units shipped globally in 2019."

Impacts of Robots in Workspaces

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFG, the largest bank in Japan had introduced a humanistic robot called NAO, for customer interactions. Similarly, Amazon is known to have incorporated several robots in its warehouse operations that work along with human employees. Investing in robots can benefit business growth in many ways. Let us take a look at some of the benefits.

• Robots can work in adverse environmental conditions and do not need lighting or ventilation in order to do so. They can take up dangerous tasks which can injure human beings. Since humans getting injured can have serious repercussions, robots are a desirable choice in such situations.

• Robots are cheaper and they don't require consistent investment unlike hiring human employees. The costs of robots are now in a decreasing stage and it will further go down once they become popular in workplaces.

• Humans and robots can work complementing each other. Robots are capable of doing tasks faster than humans with utmost precision. Less human intervention will result in minimal errors. Robots share the workload of human employees by taking over mundane tasks that need less human brain intervention.

Challenges Looming Over Adopting Robots

• Robots are complex in nature and hence it needs a lot of skill and time to programme robots. Complexities in the robots complicate working operations which can act as a potential risk for the products and the machines involved. Robots in the present scenario are expensive and this disables many small enterprises from adopting them, which in turn increases competition in markets. High maintenance costs of robots can doom the company in bankruptcy.

• It is still difficult for robots to do all tasks on their own. Robots need to be monitored by humans most of the time and do complex tasks that cannot be performed by the robot hands.

• Communication of the robots with other robots or a centralised control system can create standoffs between robots. Advanced automation is necessary for the robots to efficiently enable interoperability in workspaces. For instance, a report in Wired mentions Changi General Hospital in Singapore that has employed robots often face standoffs without knowing how to navigate. The report says that to alleviate these standoffs, the hospital uses software developed by Open Robotics, to let robots from different manufacturers talk to each other and negotiate safe passage.

• AI and robots are blamed for taking over jobs, thus increasing unemployment rates. The advent of robots will minimise manual labour and this can cost jobs. There are a lot of mundane and repetitive tasks like customer care interactions which have huge manpower involved.