The role and challenges of robots in the Fourth Industrial Revolution from technological, social, and economic perspectives.
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: As the Fourth Industrial Revolution(4IR) is increasingly associated with our lives. This marks a cross-domain fusion of various technologies, and robots can link those technologies together. This thesis will briefly introduce the core technologies related to robots and the challenges robots face. In social fields, there are numerous benefits of robotization brings to humankind, but still some ethical problems, such as how to arrange the workers replaced by robots. Economically, robotization massively increases productivity in industry. However, the funding issues when setting up the robotization may increase unbalance in competition between small and big companies. Additionally, this article analyses some of the successful applications of robots to show the advantages of robotization. Mainly, the positive impact is more than the drawbacks. With the ongoing innovation of technologies and gradually improving laws and policies, the challenges will finally be solved. In conclusion, this paper summarizes the opportunities and challenges of robots and gives some advice on how to overcome them.
DOI: 10.54097/w3wdx132
Author: Kerun Zhu
Institution: University of Southampton
Language: English
Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4413401499