Forget Hollywood, These Are the Robots Transforming Cities and Utilities

I, Robot, Megan, Bicentennial Man, AI Artificial Intelligence. In Hollywood, we find many examples of futures with robots. However, what we tend to see is focused on humanoid robots that imitate humans. But in the real world, especially regarding cities and utilities, robots look and act differently. Sure, there are advanced AI integrated humanoids like Sophia and a Ameca, but when it comes to improving how cities function- from infrastructure to energy to public safety- it's not about human-like form, it's about function. So let's explore the real robots you can find in a city or utility. There are different types of robots: manual, so 100% controlled by humans, semi-autonomous, works with human oversight, and autonomous, they work entirely on their own. In cities and utilities, you can find a bit of everything. Manual robots have been around for a long time. We've got drones used for wildfire situational awareness, building efficiency projects, or infrastructure inspections like power lines or leaks in rural water pipes. Dog robots used for exploring and gathering data on dangerous spaces like sewers or tunnels, or in construction, which is starting to become a big focus for cities, robot arms to assist workers. These kinds of robots, are used for harsh work. So when we use this robot, we save people’s lives and we are making sure that they are safe. They are more efficient because they will not be tired at the end of the day. Then we have semi-autonomous robots in cities and utilities. These can navigate on their own, avoid obstacles, carry out tasks... But humans still have to define each mission. These will once again be drones and robot dogs that can fly and walk predefined routes and collect sensor data. And one of the more exotic semi-autonomous robots we may find in a city is a Wasteshark, a floating robot that collects rubbish from canals and harbors. The cool thing is that many of these semi-autonomous robots can become autonomous by adding AI and sensors. The high tech stars are autonomous robots. These navigate, sense, analyze, and act all on their own, without human input. We can find Knightscope, which patrols parking lots to detect security threats. In waste sorting plants, there's the visionAI-robotic arms team, in which AI cameras identify and detect items that need to be separated on the sorting belts and robotic arms separate the selected objects. In water utilities, autonomous underwater vehicles like Eelume are used to scan underwater infrastructure. But the most famous autonomous robots are the wheels ones. Autonomous vehicles like the Waymo robotaxis, which you can spot in US cities. With LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, cameras, radar, IMUs, GPS... AVs are packed with tech that allows the vehicles to move freely around the city. Then there's the autonomous sweeper Trombia Free, Angsa’s robot which collects small rubbish like cigarets from grass, identifying what to pick up through AI. Or the trending last mile robots which are used to deliver parcels, for example. Being a complement to our employed driver fleet or our franchise fleet. So it's never going to replace drivers, it’ll just be a complement to them. Gives us another option with working time directive, with delivery operational hours, we can we can operate the robot 24 hours a day. But I can say that with 40 parcels over a week, that would typically take one diesel van off the road. We need to make a special mention to humanoids. These are very rare in cities and utilities today. While visually impressive, most are used for demonstration, research, and entertainment. Not yet for real useful use cases. So we would like to use the humanoid to replace the very simple human labour things that it can do like cleaning, cooking, something like this. The idea of robots in a city and utility is to enhance and improve services, as well as everyday life. They can do that by reducing emissions like the last mile robot, recycling better and more like the AI-robotic arm team, cleaning like the Wasteshark or Angsa robots, or finding infrastructure issues like drones or the autonomous underwater vehicles. They do this faster, safer, and more efficiently. Residents may not notice, but robots have become a key component to many utilities and cities. And with AI, we're bound to see more fully autonomous robots that can make decisions on their own, relying less and less on their creators.