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Asked by merlindavid98 to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 15 Nov 2012.
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Naomi Elster answered on 15 Nov 2012:
I think there is quite a strong future for robotics in both medicine and science. For example, there was a documentary on the BBC a few months ago about new treatments for cancer and it showed how a surgeon could operate using a robotic arm which he controlled with a lever. He still had to use the same dexterity that he would when operating with his hands, but the huge advantage was that the arm had a camera on it, which meant he could see a lot better than he could have done if he were doing the operation manually.
Robots have a number of advantages over humans, the biggest one being that they don’t get tired. A robot arm will be able to add the same amount of liquid into a mixture forever when a human arm will get tired and might make mistakes. Robots can also work quickly which means we can get much more work done and they will do the same thing every time. In both science and medicine, robot arms will be steadier and safer to work with in a lot of situations, and using robotics to do simple tasks will help us work quicker. But robots won’t replace scientists and doctors, because decisions will have to be made by people, not machines.
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Andrew Jackson answered on 15 Nov 2012:
I agree with Naomi. i think the fine scale ability of robots to perform really delicate tasks while being controlled by a surgeon are very close to being common in hospitals. You can imagine how careful you have to be when operating on the brain or the eye, or reconnecting severed nerves, and if a robot can help slow it down and be more accurate and less shaky then thats a huge help.
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Eileen Diskin answered on 18 Nov 2012:
Wow, that’s a great question! Already some robots are being used in medicine. But its always going to be the humans that have to program the robots, and make sure they’re working correctly…so we will still always need doctors around to make sure that they’re doing a good job!
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