Introductory Chapter: Multi-Robot Systems Changing the Human Life

1. Introduction

People often do repetitive work in their daily lives, factories, schools, and hospitals. Most people do not like repetitive work and also do not like working in closed office environments. Especially, medical staff in hospitals perform thousands of repetitive tasks such as drawing blood and measuring the human heart rate. Factory workers also perform several never-ending repetitive tasks such as operating forklifts, painting cars, removing defective products, monitoring and troubleshooting, assembling products or components, operating machinery and tools, and packing products or components. People are faced with a much more important problem beyond being bored because of doing repetitive tasks. These repetitive jobs often cause work accidents such as poisoning from painting a car, injury from falling heavy metal in a factory, and hand cut from sharp knife. It is not an easy thing to make repairs under a ten-ton car for fear of falling on it. Even being in a hospital is a very stressful situation on its own. Working thousands of meters below in a coal mine is a frightening activity in itself. Working in a factory where explosives are produced is not for everyone. It is possible to multiply these examples.

At this very moment, multi-robot systems can find solutions to all these problems. Multi-robot systems are the best candidates for carrying out repetitive, monotonous, and dangerous tasks in the field without getting bored, tired, and overwhelmed. A medical robot can take blood from hundreds of patients without getting bored. A factory robot can nonstop paint cars for several days. A multi-robot system can tirelessly turn hundreds of cars into a line.

2. Multi-robot systems converting the human life

Almost eight decades have passed since the development of the first single serial robot manipulator. In the beginning, only serial robots were produced, but nowadays, multi-robot systems are designed and produced intensively. Multi-robot systems have recently started to be used safely in many areas. Today, multi-robot systems have become equipped enough to work alone in a factory, armed for use in battlefields, trusted to care for elderly people, skilled enough to participate in surgical operations in a hospital, excellent in pick-and-place applications, and smart enough to bring a selected product from a shopping mall. Especially as a result of the development and inevitable rise of multi-robot systems, it has become an inevitable reality that robots replace employees. Today, robots and human workers work in the same office. It seems inevitable that some people will leave their jobs entirely to robots in the future [1, 2]. In this case, social scientists should seek answers to the following questions: (1) How ready is humanity for this inevitable reality [3]? and (2) What solutions do social scientists propose for this inevitable reality [4]?

The fact that multi-robot systems are advanced enough to perform surgery in the hospital seems to benefit humanity as well as its bad consequences. Multi-robot systems are cheaper than designing all the skills in a single robot and doing the work. In particular, many robots can come together and do many things for the benefit of humanity. Swarm robotics is a very good example of this type of multi-robot system. Swarm robotics can be defined as the systematic management of a group consisting of a large number of simple robots. According to the some researchers, the collective behavior of robots in a robot swarm results from local interactions between robots [5]. This approach was inspired by other living things in nature, such as ants, where swarm behavior occurs. The field of swarm robotics studies the design, physical structures, and control behaviors of robots. There are several potential application areas of swarm robotics such as search and rescue missions [6] and military robot missions [7]. Autonomous robotic logistics is another multi-robot system that provides unmanned autonomous transfer of objects from one location to another with minimal human intervention. Surveillance and search and rescue applications are another application area of the multi robot systems. Surveillance practices are applied in both indoor [8] areas and outdoor areas [9]. Exploration is another application type of multi robot systems. In exploration, robots in a team are deployed to an unfamiliar location to explore the area. Many problems such as disconnection and battery drain are encountered in such applications [10].

3. Conclusion

The rapid improvement of technology causes robots to become more and more capable. Thus, robots can now perform tasks that they could not before, easier, faster, and with higher quality. In addition to these advantages, there are significant decreases in robot costs and operations compared to the past. As a result of falling robot costs, increasing skills, and working in cooperation, multi-robot systems have started to become an alternative for almost every job that humankind performs. Although multi-robot systems are increasingly working with people or alone in offices, the social consequences of this situation have not yet been fully explored. If people will work less in the future, how people will spend their free time is a fact that social scientists should think about in advance.