Future of Work with Robotics - 18599

The DOE Environmental Management mission continues with remaining tasks that are high-hazards to human workers and high-consequences to the nation, resulting in potentially high risks to project costs and schedules. This is the mission pull. At the same time, robotic technologies are hitting a turning point with increased productivity and reliability within society, supporting a technology push. Enabling this push are better computer processing following Moore's Law, breakthroughs in biometric and learning algorithms,and riding a wave of venture funding for intended commercialization of mechatronic and Internet of Thing (IOT) projects. There has been overall improvements in material technologies, algorithms, and software standardization with tools/libraries such as the Robot Operating System (ROS). The internet has made knowledge ubiquitous and the cell phone sector has pushed the boundaries of systems-on-chip technology. This current growth is a race between large global technology companies, and between countries that understand that there is a prize with increased commerce based on being a leader in the field of robotics and automation. This technological advances have placed this technology solidly within the next 4. Industrial Revolution being tracked by the World Economic Council. Policies and law can slow this progression down, but technological changes in adjacent fields will put additional pressure on human workers by being more economical and in saving lives. A fundamental issue is will this change be gradual or disruptive such as with the forecasted singularity. There is also a realization with automation that the transition of human workers to other fields may be temporary, but in the long run, workers may run out of viable work and long-term occupations. The obvious future of human jobs are most assured by those who can embrace the change through the design, development, installment, and maintenance of the technology. Younger workers can be re-educated while older humans can be re-trained. The goal of this paper is to explore all the forces that are enabling this revolution, investigating its many impacts, and speculating on the future of human jobs during nuclear remediation. Automation has made an impact to the manufacturing sector, and has since expanded to the retail and services sectors. The question is will this same automation transition, including robotics and artificial intelligence, occur to the environmental management and cleanup sector, and how should we prepare ourselves for this change. (author)