by It’s no lie that how People’s lives have gotten disrupted by this pandemic. With Many stores close, people staying at home. It started making me wonder how this will shape our future we might be living in.
Automation is already having a major effect on our society. you can really see the changes happening like stores using check self-checkouts, Many restaurants have in online order services and using self pick up boxes And even delivery robots. Many of the big online retailers have some kind of automation in there warehouses these days, there is no bigger example than Amazon.
While there’s a lot of automation going on, there still a need for the human element for all these systems to work. Stores still need to be stocked, food still needs to be cooked and someone at a Warehouse still has to put the item into a box to ship it.
Now with this pandemic; many of those’s people who keep these systems working and moving, are at high risk of the virus or have been remove for safety reasons.
My question is, will this pandemic accelerate the move towards automation?
One of the biggest factors that has impeded many large corporations from even thinking about full automation was the time and cost of development. It doesn’t make too much sense to spend millions on a robots that can make hamburgers, where you could just hire a person. besides just implementing this automation in already working environment with people would be enormous endeavor. So it’s not much of a surprise not to see robots everywhere right now.
But like anything, things improve and the cost of robotics and automation has reduced over the years. Nobody likes and uncertainty, especially businesses. The Idea of a workforce that can keeps working day and night and doesn’t have health issues and potentially being cheaper, sounds very appealing to any employer.
While I don’t believe that everything going to suddenly switch to automation, I do believe that there’s going to be a bigger push towards it the following years.
Its not just jobs at risk, just look at everyone buying online. once anything is over will they start going back to a physical store? People are creatures of habit, and generally choose the option that’s easiest.
Another driving point for any development is fear. Don’t believe me? Here I’ll give you a scenario. If a restaurant was fully automated with no people inside cooking or preparing the food would you rather go there during a pandemic than somewhere else that isn’t? I know plenty of people in my own family who would like to go to a restaurants right now, but just too afraid that the food might be contaminated with the virus because of the people inside handling the food.
Now with news of warehouses, factorys shutting down. As soon as the human element was remove these’s systems begin to shutdown. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to think that if it was all done by automation the impact would be nowhere as severe, like it is now.
So what does this all mean? My belief is many businesses and corporations are going to increase there focus towards automation, regardsess how fast we recover. I don’t believe things are going to return to the way they where. Theses Changes where already in motion before pandemic happen, And now it’s just been accelerated.
