The Future of Robot Copiers

I picked this up in my "g" alerts the other day, at first I had deleted it, then I had a thought about how these robots would need to be repaired,  after all they are machines, right?

Yomiuri Shimbun: What is your strategy for the robot business?

Fujio Mitarai: We'll integrate Canon's basic lens, image processing and semiconductor technologies. In the initial phase, these technologies will be used at many of our factories, and later we'll use them to produce and market industrial robots, starting no later than 2015.

Further down the road, this could lead to robots for nursing care and medical treatment. These robots will use artificial intelligence to analyze people's conditions and treat them, and use sensors to determine how much power is needed to lift a heavy item.

We've made great strides in refining the technologies needed for robot production. We're also considering mergers and acquisitions of robotics companies.

Whoa, robots for nursing care and medical treatment, how will their bedside treatment be, could it be better than what we have now? Twenty Fifteen is only a little over 4 years away for Canon to start marketing industrial robots. A quick google of industrial robots led me to Epson, FANUC and irobot (SUGV).

What will the future bring with robotics?  Robots are already used in manufacturing especially in the car industry.  Will we have robots that greet us, feed us, drive us, care for us and shop for us in the not to distant future? It has to be that way right, what happens when all of the developing countries don't have cheap labor anymore, what could be cheaper than to have a robot perform those tasks. You wouldn't have to pay them, give them a vacation, a pension, no sick days, no medical costs.  Robots will be a part of our daily lives in the future (thank god it's not my future).

Could the copier companies of today become the on-site service providers for the robots of the future? I say yes, there's going to have to be a fleet of service providers,. Statistics from the International Ferderation of Robotics estimate that there will be million units in service by the end of 2011 and JRA predicts a 15 Billion dollar market by the end of 2015.

Darn, do you think we'll have copiers that will load their own paper, fill their own toner hoppers, remove their own paper jams?  I think not, by the time we get their I'm betting dollars to doughnuts paper will have gone the way of the horse and buggy. Truly, when was the last time you saw a piece of paper in a Star Trek movie?

-=Good Selling=-