Robotics for "Dull and Dangerous Jobs" | Steven Horton, IBM @ Tech Show London 2023

The EM360 team was at Tech Show London 2023 to interview business leaders and industry experts about everything Enterprise technology – from AI to cybersecurity to data. 

Yesterday we spoke to Steven Horton, Account Technical Leader at IBM about its partnership with Boston Dynamics and the current and future use cases of robots within the enterprise. 

A robot dog for “the dull and the dangerous”

When asked about the use cases of robotics’ within the enterprise, Mr Horton explained that robotic products have a variety of different use cases within the enterprise, but work especially well in “dull and dangerous” tasks not fit for humans. 

“This is our Robot dog spot. It's basically a mobile sensor platform. It's a combination of over 10 years worth of research and effort from the wonderful. Both assisted at Boston Dynamics and they've come to IBM to really help us to help them take this kind of fantastic platform into the enterprise, Mr Horton said. 

"The sort of traditional industries that we see with that kind of work order management. It's industrial, it's utilities and so on [mobile sensor platforms] are being used to do inspection really a, with a platform like this, you're looking at the dull, , dangerous stuff.

Things that you can take away from the dull, dangerous jobs from humans, and you can elevate them into doing tasks that are much more suited for the human being and the human brain.”

The future of the enterprise lies in robotics

When asked about what lies ahead for robotics within the next ten years, Mr Horton predicted that the development of the technology will accelerate and more and more use cases will become clear. 

“It's really accelerating. I think what we'll start to see is where these robots can take over those dull, and dangerous jobs and we can start to free up humans to do. more high-value tasks. And we can start to see more automation in these kinds of environments. 

We'll start to get more value in our companies. You've got a quadruped robot a walking robot here, but it's also connecting it In with drones and ground vehicles,” Mr Horton said. 

“It's bringing all of those together and Using them in concert together to solve problems. Yeah, that's what we're gonna see now.  We're really gonna start to see that technology getting better, but also those use cases coming out more and more. As we start to combine multiple different types of robots, we'll start to see that we can really, really achieve some quite cool things.”