By Dani Shae Thompson

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

At the Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) Summit 2015, four Colorado change-makers proved that they exemplify what Alexander Hamilton, Peter Marshall, or a whole host of other notable folks (quote origin is under heavy debate) encouraged in this quote.

These four driven individuals were panelists for the COIN session, “Taking a stand for change”, during which, they explained what they are doing to encourage positive social change. Their organizations are reaching people all around the world—but they were proud to say they all got their start right here in Colorado.

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“01110011001011100101011 1001 1011101”

Translation: Robots are embedding themselves into our everyday lives. Better brush up on your binary.

Robotic technologies are going to enable us to do incredible things in the future. And one panel at COIN 2015 spent their time discussing the implications of robotics working their ways into our lives. Will they come in peace? Or do we have to start accepting our new robot overlords?

You’re probably thinking of the Google self-driving car, but we can also include most unmanned aerial vehicles into this category, even though we don’t like to categorize them that way because of their lack of mobility and robotic personalities.

One thing’s for sure, though: The robots are coming.

The bot talk kicked off today at the COIN Summit, led by Session Guide Leah Hunter, a technology writer for Fast Company. Joining her were a panel of experts: Alex Ferworn, Professor of Computer Science at Toronto, Canada’s Ryerson University; Tim Haynie, Founder of Spectrabotics; and Pramila Mullan, Senior Manager Infrastructure & Systems at Accenture Technology Labs.

Our tech experts began with a look into what fuels industrial robotics and glimpsed at the future of the robotics economy.

“The industrial Internet is about embedded sensors, cloud storage, and cloud computing coming together to fuel this industry,” said Pramila.

“What’s interesting in this industry is a lot of the emphasis is starting today with folks looking at operational efficiency: How do we take our existing assets and use them better? But that’s just the start of the journey. And it’s going to take us to our next destination, which is an outcome-based economy.”

“Outcome-based economy” simply means that instead of paying for services, we’re actually purchasing the outcome we desire. I.e., in healthcare, we pay physicians to keep us healthy instead of paying for a routine checkup. But that means we need to work smarter, using tools like wearables and other embedded sensors to gather and analyze data. That’s how we transform our workforce into the next generation, by empowering humans with robotic counterparts (wearables and UAVs).

But now we’re inching ever closer to a completely autonomous robotic workforce, where humans are the ones in control, or even simply monitoring the overall output, rather than micromanaging. It’s becoming more of a collaborative process, where humans are building machine-learning capabilities into robots so we can begin to step away and let them handle the menial and dirty tasks, while humans can focus on the high-level problem solving.

Think about the agriculture industry, where automation replaced a lot of the handwork that was taking place on farms. And those workers, once they were freed from the farm, were able to kick off the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution of our time is going to come down to data. Because the more we measure and show people and organizations we can capture data, the more they want. And faster!

“The biggest impact that drones have made in our society is in the incredible amount of data we can retrieve from them,” said Haynie about UAVs.

“They also have the added benefit of being able to fly at different altitudes, and fly whenever, and almost wherever, they want. But it’s all about the sensors. Better data leads to expanding public safety, increasing operating efficiencies, and enhancing situational awareness.”

In the past, it was governments that empowered the university system to make breakthroughs in these types of areas. But now, organizations like DARPA host competitions where they offer large cash prizes to the team with the best prototype. And, not surprisingly, their most recent competition focused on Robotics and their ability to help humans in dangerous situations, like being trapped in a collapsed building.

Ferworn discussed the DARPA challenge, and some of the challenges they face.

“I don’t care if a robot can turn a valve, or open a door, we want them to recognize us buried under the rubble and come save us,” said Ferworn about rescue ‘bots. “We’re still using the same technology that we’ve used to save people who are trapped since World War I: dogs. Because they have an incredibly refined sense of smell, they’re fast, and work for play.”

But Ferworn says there’s a lot we can learn from our canine companions, and how they save people trapped in rubble, that we can apply to future robotics. He even performed a live demonstration with a canine member of the Colorado rescue squad. The furry savior rushed under the stage to save the “trapped” human.

So how can we make humans want to use robotics, if there’s no stopping them?

Firstly, they’ll have to show us their advantages. People are only going to appreciate how robots are going to save them time or make their life easier. The right situation for robotics is in the dirty, dangerous jobs that humans should no longer be doing. Then, if we add in the computing technologies, artificial intelligence, and real-time streaming of data from UAVs, you’re met with an incredibly powerful robotic companion who can tackle almost any task his (Or her? Its?) human handler wants to assign.

Each and every one of these incredible technologies exist in one form or another today. Now we need each sector to come together, collaborate, and help shape the robotic workforce of the future.

By Emily Przekwas - @eprekwa

For those who were not endowed with physical prowess, there exists an arena in which competition is fueled by intellect and science, rather than muscles and brawn. Competitive robotics. Yes, it’s a thing.

Popularized by the Comedy Central TV show Battle Bots, the battling robotics community has created a space for themselves among the competitive arts. Last month, Spark Fun opened its new 100,000 square foot facility and grounds to host an Autonomous Vehicle Competition at their location just north of Boulder.

The battling robotics field was started in the 1990s in San Francisco by a group of enthusiasts with connections to the visual effects industry in California.  When the show was created and distributed by Comedy Central, it created an entire culture behind robotics, which, while present across the country, has found a strong base in Colorado. Now the robots will be competing on network TV in front of a primetime audience on ABC.

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