When Blade Runner was released in 1982, few thought that the futuristic predictions of Ridley Scott’s film would end up coming true. In the film, robot engineers are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining humanoid replicants. Currently, these jobs have an equivalent in industry, where technicians work on the development of digital tools, such as automation or robots, for various industrial and service applications, in addition to ensuring their correct operation.
Robotics has also become a key factor in labor transformation, driving automation and collaboration between humans and robots in various tasks. “Robots free us from certain more tedious and repetitive tasks, and allow us to focus on those that imply a greater value, which are those that only people can do, and which in most cases are linked to making more complex decisions”, explains Emilia Martínez Serrano, Director of Technologies for Asset Optimization at Repsol Technology Lab, the innovation center of the multi-energy company.
The robots that Repsol is implementing in its operations help them to optimize processes, improve efficiency, precision, productivity and guarantee safety. “In our company we have robotic arms and we work with logistics robots that allow us to handle samples, carry out inspections and work in environments that may pose a risk to people,” adds Martínez Serrano.
An example of how reality has caught up with –or surpassed– fiction are the drone pilots that appear in Avatar (2009). James Cameron’s film presents a world in which humans control drones to explore and colonize distant planets. Today, drone engineers are employed in a variety of industries, from aerial photography and precision agriculture to infrastructure inspection. Another much more recent film that delves into the use of drones is Top Gun: Maverick (2022), a sequel to Top Gun (1986). The work, directed by Joseph Kosinski, invites us to reflect on the role of humans in an increasingly technological age.
Other futuristic professions that seemed exclusive to fictional films and that today are already implemented in companies are specialists in exoskeleton, such as those who appear in E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Aliens (1986), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) or Iron Man (2008). It is in the logistics industry where robotic exoskeletons are used to improve the strength and resistance of workers in loading and unloading tasks, thus reducing the risk of injury and increasing safety and productivity.
One of the companies that is progressively introducing autonomous robots in its logistics centers is Amazon, while other companies –mainly in the automotive sector– such as Iveco, Ford, General Motors, Audi and SEAT use or are testing exoskeletons. For example, Ford has introduced bionic suits at some of its plants to prevent its employees from being injured while working on assembly lines.
We end the list of professions that have gone from utopia to reality with the developers of virtual assistants and chatbots capable of generating increasingly “human” conversations with users through the use of conversational AI. And if not, just ask Theodore, the protagonist of Her (2013), who falls in love with Samantha, the female voice of a new operating system based on artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence – and here we must mention The Matrix (1999) – has become a fundamental tool in many industries. Today, companies that develop technologies in the field of conversational AI are better known, such as Verbio Technologies, but companies from all sectors are exploring different applications of generative AI in processes in which it could provide differential value both for the company as for people.
“The new advances in the development of generative AI represent unprecedented potential to transform the productive capacity of companies and their employees,” said Juan José Casado, Director of Data and Analytics at Repsol. This includes tasks as diverse as facilitating access to information for decision-making, the management and generation of documentation, the creation of multimedia content, the development of intelligent assistants or the generation of code for the development of technological solutions, among others. . However, “the challenge in the industry is not so much how to incorporate robots into processes, but rather how we are going to work in our day-to-day work by collaborating with new robots equipped with AI,” concludes Martínez Serrano.
