The Role of Robotics in Human Discoveries Ahead

But now consider the possibility of sending a machine to do those things in places no human has ever been — deep under the ocean, or at the far end of our solar system. Sounds like science fiction, right? Well, it’s happening right now. Robots are now becoming our partners in discovery, venturing to places that we cannot go and doing things that we cannot do. They’re helping us solve all sorts of mysteries about the planet, the universe and our own bodies. As we look forward, robots will continue to be at the fore of challenging what we think and believe is possible.

Whether it’s little robots that can crawl through a blood vessel or monsters like the ones roving Mars, robotics technology is reshaping how we make discoveries. Such mechanical helpers never tire, never breathe, and they can work in areas where humans would die. They’re not taking the place of human scientists and explorers — they’re making us better, more powerful by broadening our reach and abilities. Here is a primer on how robots are changing the future of human experience, and some amazing discoveries they may one day help us make.

Bots on the Final Frontier: Space Missions

Humans have long been intrigued by space; it’s also extremely dangerous and expensive to send people there. This is where robots are most impressive. They can journey for years, endure intense radiation and visit worlds millions of miles away.

Mars Rovers: Our Eyes on the Red Planet

The Mars rovers — including Curiosity and Perseverance — are our remote-control geologists on Mars. These car-size robots circle the red planet, photographing it, analyzing rocks and hunting for signs of ancient life. Perseverance also carries a small helicopter drone known as Ingenuity that flies in the thin Martian air, demonstrating that it will be possible to explore other planets from the air.

These robots have found evidence that Mars once had rivers and lakes, so it may have been able to support life billions of years ago. We wouldn’t really know anything certain about Mars’s past if it weren’t for robots. The next generation of Mars robots will also gather samples and get them ready for future missions to transport back to Earth — which would be billions more expensive if we had humans do it directly.

Exploring the Outer Solar System

Robots have traveled to every planet in our solar system. The Voyager probes, which were launched in 1977, are still returning information from way outside our solar system — four decades later! Newer missions, like Juno for Jupiter’s massive storms and the Cassini spacecraft for its 13 years buzzing around Saturn and its mysterious moons, are on the hunt as well.

One of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, punches water geysers into intergalactic space. Robots found that out, and scientists now believe there’s an ocean beneath its ice — maybe with life in it. Robots in the future will plumb these alien oceans, looking for microorganisms that no human could safely visit.

Space Telescopes: Robotic Observatories in the Sky

The James Webb Space Telescope is, essentially, a giant robot eye floating in the void of space. It will be able to see more deeply into the universe than anything we’ve ever built and peer at galaxies that grew just after the Big Bang. These robotic telescopes are how we learn about how planets form, why stars die, and whether or not other planets could host life.

In the decades ahead, robots will construct buildings in space, mine asteroids and maybe even build the first space stations around other moons. They will clear the path for human explorers, to make space travel safer and more feasible.

Deep Ocean Mysteries: Robots Below the Waves

We know more about space than we do about our own ocean’s depths. The deep sea is pitch black, freezing cold and the pressure is crushing — literally tons of force on every square inch. Humans can visit only in specialized submarines for limited times, but robots are able to remain down there for months.

Discovering New Species and Ecosystems

ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles — underwater robots) and AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) have found thousands of new species around volcanic vents on the ocean floor. They are creatures that can live without sunlight, using chemicals for energy instead. The discovery altered scientists’ ideas of what is possible for life.

Some deep-sea robots are fish- or jellyfish-shaped, swimming as they move so they don’t disrupt marine life. Others slither along the seafloor with robotic arms, searching for samples and measurements. These robots have discovered ancient shipwrecks, missing planes and geological formations we had never known existed.

Mapping the Unknown Ocean Floor

Only about a quarter of the ocean floor has been mapped in high resolution. The arrival of robotic submarines with sonar and cameras is changing that. They plot 3D maps of the undersea mountains, canyons and plains. This assists scientists in studying ocean currents, forecasting tsunamis and discovering new resources.

Climate Research and Coral Reef Monitoring

Robots are monitoring the impact of climate change on our oceans. Autonomous underwater drones monitor ocean temperature, acidity and currents over long distances. A few robots watch over coral reefs, employing artificial intelligence to tally fish species and assess the health of the coral without disturbing the ecosystem.

In the future, such swarms of small robots could work together to clean up ocean plastic waste or oil spills, track environmental changes in real time and even restore fragile marine ecosystems by helping repair damage to coral reefs or planting new coral polyps.

Medical Breakthroughs: The Human Body’s Tiny Robots

Certainly one of the most exciting frontiers for robots is medicine. Picture little robots the size of a grain of rice zipping through your blood vessels to clear out deadly plaque or a swarm that can help stop cancer in its tracks. This is not science fiction — it is a reality unfolding right now in research labs, and the technology may become commonplace in just decades.

Robot-Assisted Surgery

Robot-assisted surgery is already common. The da Vinci Surgical System allows surgeons to carry out operations through small incisions with the use of robotic arms that are manipulated very precisely. The robot’s “hands” don’t tremble, can twist in ways human wrists cannot and have tiny built-in cameras that magnify the surgical site.

For a patient, this translates to quicker recovery times, less pain and smaller scars. With these robots and high-speed internet connections, surgeons can even operate on patients thousands of miles away — potentially saving lives in far-off places.

Nanorobots: The Next Medical Revolution

Build tiny robots that will act like little submarines, traveling inside the body to places where few others can go. “Hunter-killer” nanobots that patrol our blood for cancer could provide such a breakthrough. These nanorobots could:

• Target cancer-killing drugs directly to tumors and keep healthy tissue safe
• Unclog arteries without surgery or a stent
• Mend broken microscopic cells
• Serve as living sensors to identify disease before outward side-effects occur

Some nanorobots in the works are powered by the body’s chemistry or react to magnetic fields being manipulated from outside the body. Although these are still largely in the research phase, some iterations are currently being trialed with humans.

Diagnostic Robots and AI Doctors

To improve disease diagnosis and to lower healthcare costs, robots that can think and learn like people are being developed by the medical industry with artificial intelligence technology. These devices analyze medical images at a rapid pace to diagnose diseases faster or better than their human counterparts. They can identify small tumors in X-rays or MRIs too small to be noticed by the naked eye. These robots do not substitute for doctors but assist them in making better decisions by instantly digesting vast amounts of data.

You can swallow apple seed-size robots equipped with cameras (they are known as capsule endoscopes) that can take thousands of pictures of your digestive tract and wirelessly send them to doctors. This is so much easier than the old fashioned endoscopy.

Protection of the Environment: Robots Acting as the Guardians of Earth

And those threats are further intensified by the serious environmental problems we face on Earth, such as climate change and species extinction. Robots are now essential tools in a quest to monitor and safeguard the state of our natural world.

Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Poaching

Drones and ground robots in national parks and reserves, equipped with thermal cameras and artificial intelligence are on the lookout for poachers before they can kill endangered wildlife. Other robots appear and sound like real animals, which enables the researchers to safely watch wildlife behavior up close without causing any stress.

Underwater robots follow endangered whales and dolphins, observing their health and migration routes. Drones in flight tally bird populations and detect the locations of their nesting sites, providing conservationists with the information they require to help preserve these species.

Disaster Response and Search and Rescue

When earthquakes, hurricanes or fires hit, robots can comb through rubble and hazardous areas where it would be too dangerous for human rescuers to go. Snake-like robots could wriggle through narrow crevices in a crumbling building and use cameras and sensors to locate survivors. Drones with thermal cameras can pick up the heat signatures of people stranded in rural outposts or buried beneath debris.

Some rescue robots haul supplies, establish communication links or, in some cases, deliver emergency medical care to trapped victims as human rescuers try to penetrate disaster zones. This spares untold lives every year.

Climate Monitoring and Research

Thousands of robotic sensors bob in the ocean, drift on ice sheets and clump together in remote forests, constantly measuring temperature, humidity, air quality and other environmental conditions. This network of robots provides scientists with a real-time look at how our climate is changing.

Robots are also venturing into the most extreme environments on Earth — inside active volcanoes, underneath melting glaciers and in sweltering deserts. The data they gather can lend crucial insight into natural systems and allow scientists to predict how they may change in the future.

Archaeological Finds: Robots Digging Up the Past

History is buried in the land beneath us and robots are helping archaeologists to uncover it without disturbing increasingly fragile artifacts and sites.

Non-Invasive Site Exploration

Ground-penetrating radar robots can “see” underground without digging, unearthing buried cities, tombs and human artifacts. That is saving years of excavation work and helping to guide archaeologists on where they should dig cautiously.

Flying drones with specialized cameras can identify ancient ruins buried beneath the jungle canopy, or reveal traces of roads and buildings that would otherwise be invisible from the ground. These findings have illuminated lost civilizations and rewritten history books.

Deep Cave and Tunnel Exploration

Many ruins contain hazardous caves, tunnels and underwater labyrinths. Robots can explore these regions safely, create maps in 3D and drill down to take close-up pictures. They have found ancient art, burial chambers and artifacts that would be too risky for human explorers to reach.

In the coming years, they might even translate ancient languages by looking at patterns in texts and comparing them to other known languages so we can decode some of what civilizations are still too mysterious.

• 🌌 You may also like this deep dive into history’s boldest space journeys: The Most Impressive Space Missions of All Time

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Smarter Discovery Machines

The real game-changer isn’t the fact that robots can go where people can’t — it’s how much smarter they’re becoming. Today’s robots employ artificial intelligence to learn from experience, identify patterns and even make decisions autonomously.

Autonomous Exploration

The future doesn’t need so many human-controlled robots. They will be able to adventure through alien planets, ocean trenches or disaster areas on their own, making logical decisions about where to go and what to investigate. When they see something interesting, they will know to check it out and won’t have to wait for human controllers on Earth to tell them what.

This is important for the exploration of far-off planets, where radio signals can take minutes to travel and return. A robot trundling around on Europa, Jupiter’s moon, could hardly wait 45 minutes for the signals back and forth every time it wanted to make a decision — it would have to think for itself.

Pattern Recognition and Scientific Analysis

Robots that harness AI are capable of crunching enormous data sets to find patterns in the information that humans may never see. They might use photos to determine a new species by comparing it with databases of known creatures, pick out potential mineral deposits from geological data or identify patterns of disease within a large population.

These robots can perform thousands of experiments at once to gauge various combinations of chemicals, materials or conditions. This dramatically accelerates scientific research — discoveries that could take humans decades to uncover could instead happen in months or years.

Collaborative Robot Teams

The future of discovery may have to be paired or teamed sets of different robots together. Consider a mission to investigate an asteroid: Some robots might fly around it mapping its surface; others might land and drill out samples, while another of them analyzes those samples chemically. They would all share information immediately, each working in concert like a team.

This system of swarming seems to be based on how ants or bees collaborate to achieve complex tasks. There is no single robot that has to be good at everything — they specialize, and they collaborate.

Challenges and Ethical Issues to Be Faced

As robots get more sophisticated and become more autonomous, we are confronted with questions about how to use them.

Safety and Control

Who is to blame if an autonomous robot does something wrong and hurts someone? How can we make sure robots exploring delicate areas don’t cause environmental damage? Since robots are getting more and more autonomous, we have rules about what lines they cannot cross and the critical distances governing their behavior to avoid accidents.

Privacy and Surveillance Concerns

Robots with cameras and sensors can be amazing tools of discovery — but they can also intrude in private spaces. Drones used to track wildlife can also keep an eye on people. The benefits of robotic surveillance must be balanced with people’s right to privacy.

Access and Equality

Today, advanced research robots are something only rich countries and large companies can buy. How do we see to it that the benefits are shared globally? Would poor countries be entitled to medical nanorobots? To whom do the resources belong that robots find on an asteroid or in the mighty depths of the ocean floor?

Replacing Human Experience

Some worry that humans will lose out on the high of direct discovery if they rely too much on robots. There’s something unique about a human being the first to set foot on a new world or achieve an experimental breakthrough in a lab. And we have to do it in such a way that robots become an aide or enhancing boost to human discovery and not simple replacements for the human species.

What’s Next: Predictions for the Next 50 Years

According to what’s currently being researched and the lines of exploration appearing in robotics developments, here’s what robots could help us discover over the next few decades:

2025-2035: Foundation Building

• Robots to discover unequivocal signs of ancient life on Mars
• Medical nanorobots will become pretty common for treating some cancers
• Maps of the entire bottom of the ocean will be drawn by autonomous underwater robots
• AI robots to find thousands of new species in remote oceans
• Robot swarms will clear the oceans of plastic at scale

2035-2050: Expanding Horizons

• Robots will bore through the ice on Europa or Enceladus and travel along their subterranean seas
• Medical nanobots would regularly mend cellular damage, greatly extending our natural lifespans
• Archaeology robots will dig up and film hundreds of lost cities and civilizations
• Robots prospecting for rare minerals on asteroids will bring some to Earth
• Robotic construction crews will construct the first permanent bases on the moon and Mars

2050-2075: Revolutionary Discoveries

• Robots could spot signs of extraterrestrial life on exoplanets
• Molecular robots might also be able to fix genetic defects and get rid of some inherited diseases
• Deep-earth robots could stumble onto new kinds of life in subterranean oceans we don’t even know exist
• Combine human consciousness with robotic explorers and people could “feel” what it’s like to be at a far-flung location in real time
• Self-replicating robots could spread out across the galaxy, relaying back their discoveries over distances of light-years

How Kids Can Join the Robotics Revolution

If you’re passionate about robots and discovery, there are plenty of ways to be a part of this now — not just in another decade or so.

Learn the Basics

Begin with easy programming and robotics kits at many schools or online. Languages like Python serve as powerful tools for commanding robots, while the basics can be learned without pricey equipment.

Join Robotics Clubs and Competitions

Software programs such as FIRST Robotics, VEX Robotics and others allow students to build and compete with robots. These inculcate teamwork, problem-solving and hands-on engineering skills.

Focus on STEM Education

Robotics melds science, technology, engineering and math. Excellent abilities here pave the way into careers in robotics. But never forget innovation — some of the most powerful leaps in robotics are driven by thinking differently.

Follow Current Research

The agencies, universities, companies and other institutions announce news about their robot efforts regularly. By building on this research, you can see what other people do and get ideas for your own projects.

Think About Ethics

While you study robotics, also ponder the ethics. The robotics engineers of the future must develop machines that are not only able, but willing and good for humanity.

Comparison: Humans and Robots in Exploration

Synergy: Humans and Robots Working Together

The key is not in selecting humans over robots, or vice versa — it’s combining the two. Robots can test dangerous areas, scout ahead and perform repetitive tasks while humans make strategic decisions, confront the unexpected and supply creative thought that can lead to revolutionary discoveries.

Robots will probably prepare bases and produce fuel on future Mars missions before humans set foot there. In medical research, robots may carry out thousands of experiments, but the scientific aspects are interpreted by human scientists who design the new set of experiments. In ocean exploration, robots collect data from the deep sea and humans manning ships nearby analyze it in real time and make midcourse corrections to the mission.

This collaboration increases our discovery radius from what a person or a robot could do alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will humans be replaced by robots as scientists and explorers?

A: Not likely. Robots are instruments to make human scientists stronger, not substitutes for human curiosity, creativity and intuition. The idea is to marry human intelligence with mechanical skills so they can do more together than each could separately.

Q: How can a robot survive without oxygen, in an environment like space or the deepest reaches of the ocean?

A: Robots are made with special materials that can survive extreme temperatures, pressure and radiation. They don’t require air to breathe or food to eat. They draw their energy from solar panels in the warm sunlight, by nuclear batteries through icy nights, and with rechargeable power when exploring craters where dust could also clog the generator.

Q: What has been robots’ most significant discovery to date?

A: That’s a tough one to choose just one! Among the biggest are these: Ancient water on Mars (maybe hinting at past life), thousands of new deep-sea species near hydrothermal vents, far-off exoplanets that might hold life and the structure of the universe from space telescopes.

Q: How much investment does it take to create an exploration robot?

A: It varies dramatically. Bare-bones research robots could go for a few thousand dollars. When you factor in development, launch and operation, Mars rovers cost hundreds of millions to billions. But they are still cheaper than sending humans to Mars, which would be tens of billions or more.

Q: Can anyone just build robots for discovery or do you have to work at NASA or big companies?

A: Small teams discover a lot of important things too! Universities, private researchers and sometimes even citizen scientists construct robots to make local discoveries — tracking wildlife or traversing caves, mapping archaeological sites or testing new medical devices. And the barrier to entry is falling with more affordable technology.

Q: What if a robot goes down in a remote place, like Mars?

A: Engineers attempt to repair it from the ground by uploading new software or instructions to use backup systems. Occasionally robots can self-diagnose and patch themselves on their own. But if some vital equipment fails, there’s no way to fix it — which is why robots have many redundant systems and backups.

Q: Can robots discover things better than we can?

A: They’re not better or worse; they are different. Robots are good at work that needs precision, patience, resistance to extreme environments and the ability to process large amounts of data. When it comes to dreaming up new things that haven’t existed before, humans are very good at creative thinking, spotting a pattern out of left field, reacting in ways they never anticipated and asking questions no one else had asked. The most rewarding discoveries tend to rely on both.

Q: And what’s the most awesome robot discovery mission on the horizon?

A: There are several exciting missions planned: In the 2030s, NASA’s Dragonfly will send a flying drone to investigate Titan (Saturn’s largest moon). The Europa Clipper will hunt for life in an ocean hidden beneath the icy shell of Europa. A few companies are bringing asteroid-mining robots to life. Several nanorobot trials are also growing in medicine. Any one of these groups could make groundbreaking discoveries.

Conclusion: A New Age of Exploration

We are living in an extraordinary moment. With the robots we make today, tomorrow’s discoveries will be possible that seem impossible now. They’ll discover life on other worlds, cure diseases that we cannot treat today, reveal secrets hidden under ice and water and expand human knowledge in ways we can’t even conceive of yet.

But robots are not magic — they are tools, crafted by creative, inquisitive human beings who want to answer big questions about our universe. Every robotic encounter begins with a human who asked “what if?” and proceeded to construct a machine that might arrive at the answer.

The role of robotics in humans’ future explorations is not a usurpation of exploration; rather, it’s to act as our partners, extending us out across space and time, into the microscopic and the cosmic. Between them, humans and robots can achieve much more than either ever could on its own.

The best part? The most amazing discoveries are yet to come, waiting like buried treasure for the next generation of robot builders and explorers. Maybe that includes you. The future of discovery is being scripted as we speak, and there’s a place for anyone with curiosity, creativity and the courage to go where no one has gone before.

What will you help us uncover?