Robot means "slave" in the Czech language, and today, as everyone witnesses the first-day robots were imagined as tools. From the first time, how a caveman took a tool and developed it to what we have now is simply amazing. AI and robotics have transformed this world into some different, from fifty years ago.
Scientists and engineers are now at the bleeding edge of the future, with more learning machines getting better with each successive improvement. Can this be an evolution on a mechanical scale that will have benefits for its creators?
One of the benefits of using machines to augment our own formidable facilities is improving how materials are created and designed. One limitation of scientists is how far they can manipulate chemicals and materials on a normal level for this. Led by Curtis Berlinguette, with a speciality in materials science made the bold decision to change gear and worked in tandem with another scientist. Their goal is to fix and refine solar cell materials to improve electric conductivity. This was not a piece of cake for the two when choosing the best metal and ingredient like a cooking recipe. In a word, it took many designs to sift through before getting the right one.
The robotic helper who helped tweaked everything for the researchers was a simple, one-armed robot called Ada. Ada did all the grunt work as scientists attacked the problem from all angles to come up with the mystery mix and adding the necessary AI to ADA, to make it work. Essentially, Berlinguette and company did all the input and ADA worked out the problem and implemented the solutions. All the algorithms to help the AI do the job was done by the scientists.
All the results were presented in a meeting of the Materials Research Society to expose the findings from the solar cell project. All the steps from the first to the last step was reported and the final result was creating the material in five days. Normal work on the solar cells in nine months, as stated by Curtis Berlinguette. Key processes were casting in films, heat experiments, its conduction properties and finally how the structure help during the procedure. Result of the material manipulation is a solar film, made by learning machines with 100% zero defect.
Deciding to use an AI was the breakthrough and made the shorter discovery and assembling of the solar fill faster. Increased use of AI does not replace the scientist, because it is a fast and convenient tool to get the process done faster. Racking up more errors than success is normal, but machines make it better and faster.
Experiments were done by other scientists also earned success using AI and robotics, with closed-loop algorithms. Applying this by other specialists promise more success with lower fail rates because machine AI is more precise in many ways. Having a future with the "robotic" slaves will make a scientist's job faster. Paving the way for more efficient and assistive tech that hopefully will serve people forever.
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