• Question: How will your technology improve peoples lives?

    Asked by 265rbte33 to Abbie, Melanie, Paul, Stu, Tom on 15 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Abbie Hutty

      Abbie Hutty answered on 15 Mar 2016:


      That is very difficult to assess as we have quite a pure science objective in looking for life on other planets. So that science objective itself even if we manage it maybe doesn’t exactly “improve” people’s lives, just answer a big question for us in terms of whether we are alone in the universe, and maybe what it means to be alive, and what the origin of life is.

      But often you find that with these really technical scientific missions that we are pushing the boundaries of science and technology with, we have to develop things that nobody has ever used before – technology, software, materials, techniques – that we then find can be applied to much more day-to-day things and improve them. So these “spin-offs” from our technology could improve people’s lives – we don’t know how, though, until we develop that new tech…

    • Photo: Stuart Inglis

      Stuart Inglis answered on 15 Mar 2016:


      My robots fix problems and install new equipment to try and keep the oil flowing for our society. This oil is used to power our schools, hospitals, homes and vehicles, so it could be argued that indirectly, my robots help improve people’s lives through these channels.

      But we actually don’t know much about the sea and all the life in it, so who knows what one of my robots might find down there! It might made an accident discovery which changes the world and the lives of everyone!

    • Photo: Melanie Zimmer

      Melanie Zimmer answered on 18 Mar 2016:


      My motivation is to help people and facilitate the difficulties they face at work. I hope my job and research will positively affect every day tasks for people in for example a car manufacturing plant. You probably can imagine that you have a lot of heavy parts that need to be moved around in order to be put together to a car. Robots are there to help the workers to load and unload these parts. Also, many of these environments are quite dangerous, noisy and dusty. Robots can facilitate in these environments and help to do the tasks. I hope that my software will help achieving that. 🙂

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