Robotics: Impact on Society, Workplace, and Environment

This essay explores the significant impact of robotics, a prominent technological trend, on society, the workplace, and environmental sustainability. It discusses how robotic automation is transforming the workplace by increasing efficiency, reducing errors, and improving employee satisfaction, while also highlighting the potential for job displacement. The essay further examines the broader societal effects of robotics, including its influence on daily life and potential health implications. Additionally, it delves into how robotics contributes to environmental sustainability through applications like waste management, climate change mitigation, and sustainable manufacturing practices. The analysis references various studies and examples, concluding with an emphasis on the positive impacts of robotics across these three areas while acknowledging the challenges, especially regarding employment. The essay highlights the versatility and future potential of robotics in enhancing technology globally.

Running Head: ROBOTICS 0
Business – Working with
Technology
Student Details:

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Technological trend has changed the way people behave and work. The chosen technological
trend is robotics which is regarded as the evolving technology which can be used for the
industrial purposes. This is the common Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool which is regarded as
the intelligent machine which can be utilized at the workplace effectively and can assist
humans to make the day to day work (Madakam, et al., 2019). Here, the paper has discussed
the impact of robotic automation on society, workplace and environmental sustainability.
The future of workplace can greatly be impacted by the robotic automation which is the
leading technological trend. Robotics can be used in the workplace for making the workplace
automation and can bring significant changes (Basiri & Mousazadeh, 2018). This can be
utilized in the production process wherein it can decrease the workload of the employees
through the performance of the repetitive tasks. Robotics technology can bring impact on the
workplace in which these intelligent machines can perform the challenging jobs and often
eliminates the time spent on un-pleasurable work. This can bring productivity at the
workplace and also this can lead to higher employee satisfaction. The benefits of using this
emerging technological trend are that it can lead to the completion of the tasks with lesser
errors and increased safety (Wisskirchen, et al., 2017). This can advance the workplace
through the facilitation of the reliability and consistency in the work which can perform
without the errors and mistakes which can hamper the production process.
There is greater impact of robots on society as these human-like intelligent machines can
perform the daily work of people efficiently and effectively. Robots have made the life of
people easier and automated as they have the tendency to perform the tasks with accuracy.
This can be used for the entertainment purposes and makes the life of people easier through
the automotive functionality. Also, robots are versatile which can be helpful in the medical
surgeries as well. Apart from the positive impact, it has negative impact as well as this has
made people lazy as people have heavily relying on such technology. People are making
reduced physical activity and due to which they have been suffering from the diseases. This
has brought an overall impact on the future of employment which is regarded as the major
social issue (West, 2015).
In today’s changing business environment, technology is becoming a solution for solving the
challenges of sustainability along with bringing opportunities globally. Technology also helps
in solving environmental issues causing negative impact on businesses. Environmental
sustainability helps in reducing the negative impact of business by making responsible

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decisions with the use of technological advancements and innovation. For instance, robots
competing during the Amazon Picking Challenge in terms of their ability to place products on
shelves and removing them; at the time of RoboCup, robots played soccer along with
rescuing humans (Nomura, 2017). In today’s time, companies are trying to utilise robots for
improving the processes to allow businesses being profitable and more efficient. Utilisation
of robots also helps in improving the efforts of sustainability in the environment by improve
recycling, fighting climate change and making manufacturing more sustainable (Folk, 2019).
For instance, Wave Glider by Liquid Robotics helped in harvesting wave and solar energy
where its applications include high-resolution carbon dioxide samples collection among
difficult locations for complete global climate change picture. Another example is about
robots killing invasive species such as the Crown-of-Thomas starfish on the “Great Barrier
Reef in Australia” that destroys thousands homes as a threat to the reef and climate change
equally (Dodge, 2018).
Moreover, robotics showing positive impact towards future sustainability of environment by
helping in planting trees, eating water pollution, cleaning water bodies, and reducing carbon
emissions along with making recycling easier and manufacturing sustainable. Robotics as a
technological trend positively impact the sustainability of the environment and making the
planet a better place to live by cleaning up and eliminating waste with involving sustainable
opportunities (Kudlak, 2019). Robotics integrated in ecosystems helped in aiding responses
towards accelerating climatic, environmental and biodiversity changes which involves
practical and ethical challenges as well. Robots-in-ecology are used for environmental
research applications as robot technologies where the environmental values and impacts are
realised for playing the role of serving benefits. Thus, this environmental robotics taxonomy
consists of environment robotics such as robots-in-ecology, robots-for-ecology and ecobots
(Wynsberghe & Donhauser , 2017). In terms of environmental sustainable development,
robotics provide qualitative benefits based on their strength, computing power, precision and
sensing capabilities along with making improvement and maintaining the quality of life.
To conclude, robotics being a technological trend in business impacted the workplace, society
and environmental sustainability in positive ways with major challenges such as decrease in
employment opportunities of employees in the workplace. Robotics helped in time
management and making work easier overall and also improved the quality of lives by
providing qualitative benefits. Lastly, utilising robotics in all the three areas impacted
positively in future in terms of enhancing technology universally.

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References
Basiri, A. & Mousazadeh, R., 2018. Industrial robotic systems & international human rights.
J. Pol. & L, Volume 11, p. 53.
Dodge, A., 2018. How Robots Are Helping in the Fight Against Climate Change. [Online]
Available at: https://blog.ozobot.com/steam/robots-helping-fight-climate-change/
[Accessed 17 April 2020].
Folk, E., 2019. How Robotics is Revolutionizing Sustainability. [Online]
Available at: https://greencleanguide.com/how-robotics-is-revolutionizing-sustainability/
[Accessed 17 April 2020].
Kudlak, L., 2019. Protecting the environment with automation and robotics engineering.
[Online]
Available at: https://medium.com/tech4planet/protecting-the-environment-with-automation-
and-robotics-engineering-44c0a176c18f
[Accessed 17 April 2020].
Madakam, S., Holmukhe, R. & Jaiswal, D., 2019. The future digital work force: robotic
process automation (RPA). JISTEM-Journal of Information Systems and Technology
Management, Volume 16.
Nomura, Y., 2017. Environment-aware Robotics. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ntt-review.jp/archive/ntttechnical.php?contents=ntr201710fa8.html
[Accessed 17 April 2020].
West, D., 2015. What happens if robots take the jobs? The impact of emerging technologies
on employment and public policy. Centre for Technology Innovation at Brookings,
Washington DC.
Wisskirchen, G. et al., 2017. Artificial intelligence and robotics and their impact on the
workplace. IBA Global Employment Institute, pp. 2012-2017.
Wynsberghe, A. v. & Donhauser , J., 2017. The Dawning of the Ethics of Environmental
Robots. Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 24, pp. 1777-1800.