Talk:Advanced automation/Self-maintenance and repair

I'm interested to know if there is much evidence of this on the horizon. The ideas in this article make sense to me, but is there any evidence that they are starting to be put into practice? I know there is autonomic computing, which is essentially self-maintenance and repair for software, but are there existing examples of self-maintaining hardware? -- Balatro

Good question. Not much that I can think of, yet (must have another trawl at some point, last one was a few years ago). This is simply my logical conclusion as to what seems technically possible. I am keen to demonstrate that this is possible actually - a good AdCiv pilot project (had better get some funding)!

Why hasn't it happened yet? Well a few reasons I think, and some are a bit chicken-and-egg (in the commercial world anyway). Firstly machines at the moment aren't designed to be repaired by robot, as plenty of dexterous humans around. Initially designing self-repairing machines would need a little more human effort in the design process (however this aspect of the design could be automated too). Secondly the repair robots simply don't exist yet either. PR2 might be a good template platform, although PR2 is not actually open-source - only ROS, which it's running. It is just a research platform currently and not optimised for repair tasks. Currently robots are too expensive and a too primitive still, but this is changing fast. Also there would probably need to be standards in place for commercial machine manufacturers / operators and repair-bot builders. Although this should not be such an issue in the world of open-source.

We are also only just getting to the technological level where we can have tiny sensors embedded in all components giving information at the resolution required. Managing the huge data flow within a complex system would be no mean feat either. All possible with current know-how though as far as I can see, it is just very early days. There are very advanced diagnostics and control systems already in places like power-plants, and fairly complex and accurate automated assembly in factories (see video of Dyson's automated motor manufacturering). It is a matter of putting the two together with accurate 3D localisation technology. -- Charles.