The Socio-technical Plan in Robotics

Unit 5 Discussion Board

The Socio-technical Plan in Robotics

Primary Response

ThienSi (TS) Le

CS875-1602C-01

Futuring & Innovation

Dr. Imad Al Saeed

 (30-May-2016)

In Unit 5 Discussion Board on the topic of “Development of the Sociotechnical Plan”, students are required to share their sociotechnical plan on technological innovation with others on Discussion Board. This short piece of writing will provide a socio-technical plan that includes Introduction, Scope, and Purpose as shown below.

The dynamic and energetic world has constantly changed and intertwined rapidly with full uncertainty and chaos. It is almost impossible to predict the different future from the known present. In an aggressively competitive business environment, many organizations realize that innovation of the existing systems with the interaction between humans and technology such as robotics in the socio-technical process and system is important in business, particularly education in computing world as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Socio-technical plan in computing

Source: Adapted from www.interaction-design.org

I. Introduction

            Social-technical plan in organizational development is a scheme of arrangement and process of complex work design that employs the interaction between humans and technology in the workplaces (Long, 2013). The social-technical system refers to the interaction between complex infrastructures and human behaviors. It is about joint optimization such as interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization or the society as a whole (Trist, & Bamforth, 1951). In education, many academicians and higher education leaders usually address using technologies to advance learning and creative expression. One of the technologies is robotics that can be applied in a socio-technical system for the educational purpose.

II. Scope

            New Media Consortium (2016) predicts that robotics can be used in higher education to assist students to become better problem solvers in the next five years. Humanoid robots can interact and assist learners in disorder or people with disability to develop well-behaved social skills and better communications in a sociotechnical process.   

Robotics has direct implications for higher education areas:     - Air traffic management targets safer drone air traffic (NMC Horizon, 2016)     - Annual robotics law and policy conference hosts conversations between designers, builders, manufacturers on the legal and social structures. (NMC Horizon, 2016)

     - Multiple disciplines on autonomous mobile robots in mechatronic systems are provided to students for engineering study (NMC Horizon, 2016)

            While robots become popular in demand in industry, robotics provides many compelling features. Some typical features are (1) teaching, (2) learning, and (3) creative inquiry.

(1)   Teaching: 

Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in healthcare robotics in the US universities such as Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, etc. with National Science Foundation (NSF)’s initiative.

(2) Learning:

Robots have been used to train medical students and perform clinical procedures in hospital settings.

(3) Creative inquiry:

Robotics research conducted a creative inquiry such as social skills in using robots to enable children to communicate each other, creating curriculum modules for math and science teachers in middle schools.

            Except the enlightening features, robotics has several limitations. Some typical limitations are:

     - Robotics’ applications such as humanlike robots have hurdles due to the complexity of the human system. For example, human’s intellectual asset is difficult to transform into machines such as humanoid robots.  

     - Even though applications of the robots gain more momentum in progress, robotics’ hardware is still in a developing stage.

    - Robotics software is diverse. There are many kinds of robotics software in various platforms that rely on many divergent manufacturers. There is no standardization in robotics software. 

III. Purpose

The aspect of robotics becomes more practical and less futuristic than ever. Robots that are recently less clumsy, more humanlike and sophisticated, can perform a useful, complex and dangerous tasks (Picard, 2016). The purpose of the study of the advancing robotics between humans to technology (i.e., robots) in socio-technical plan is to infuse more humanlike behavior in machines to adapt or accommodate human needs and demands in many fields such as manufacturing, healthcare, mining, defense, security, transportation, securities, home appliances, particularly education in using affective computing in robotics design that balances emotion and cognition.  

Figure 2: Robot and human in collaboration and interaction

(Source: Adapted from http://venturebeat.com/tag/robotics)

In summary, the writing described a development of a socio-technical plan to integrate robotics as humanoid robots to assist students in learning. The introduction, scope, and purpose of the plan were provided with features and limitations in the integration between robots and humans in this discussion.

REFERENCES

Long, S. (2013). Socioanalytic methods: discovering the hidden in organisations and social systems. Karnac Books.

New Media Consortium, (2016). NMC horizon. Retrieved April 18, 2016, from

http://www.nmc.org/nmc-horizon/ 

            go.nmc.org/airtraffic;

            go.nmc.org/calu;

            go.nmc.org/werobo;

Picard, R., (2016). Affective computing. Retrieved May 25/2016 from

http://affect.media.mit.edu/

Trist, E. L., & Bamforth, K. W. (1951). Some social and psychological consequences of the Longwall method. Human relations, 4(3), 3-38.