UNILAG tasks undergraduates on robotic technology

Coordinator, UNILAG, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory, AIRoL, Dr. Chika Yinka Banjo from the Department of Computer Science, University of Lagos, has urged youths to brace up for the future, adding that employing robot to the workforce would reduce unemployment.

Yinka-Banjo who described the robotic technological innovation as inevitable to employers of labour, enjoined youths to embrace the technology and think ahead to forestall job loss.

She said: ‘’Very soon, people’s jobs will be taken. ‘’In some places, robots are taking care of surveillance, security, checking what is going on at home and offices. Therefore, in future, many employers may not need the services of security guards to open the gate.’’

The coordinator, while maintaning that robots are going to take some jobs that are not really needed to be done by humans, however, said that the development would give humans more initiative to be creative in doing other things.

‘’We are not taking people’s jobs but there are some jobs that just need to go, we have to be sincere with ourselves. Just like when computer came, typewriter disappeared. These will help create more jobs when you know the next level,’’ she explained.

Speaking during the competition held at UNILAG, Yinka-Banjo said: ‘’The essence of organising this program is to create awareness and spread the news about robotics.

According her: “When we started using computer in Nigeria, the western world were ahead of us. When we started using normal computer to work, you can go to the university and study computer science without even seeing a computer. But now, everyone, even a child, has a computer, palmtop, phone that can be used to achieve the same thing that computer can achieve.

“In the same vein, we are trying to preach the gospel of robotics so that from the undergraduate level, to the secondary school and down to the primary school, people will be aware of it. We want them to know what is happening in robotics, participate in it and see if they have the passion to move it forward because robotics is the future,” she said.

She explained that robotic is a field while robot is a machine that is given instruction and it is not human. These days, robots do some operations like housemaids in the western world.

Explaining how robotic works, she said: ‘’The major thing there is the program that has been written to take care of the robots. The robot is a zombie. It is whatever you tell it that it will do. The key thing there is how do you program it to do the job you want it to do? Robotic is the field while robot is the equipment.

Robots are going to take some jobs that are not really needed to be done by humans. It will give humans more initiative to be creative in doing other things.

Her words: ‘’There are some things that even though robots do, it can’t be taken away from humans. For instance, if you say robots should do surveillance, check who comes in and goes out, then if that is the type of work you do, you will be more creative, thinking of what you can do in security that robots can’t do. It will give you more challenging ideas so that we can dive into more things that will give us better environment and better operational level in society.’’

Speaking in the same vein, UNILAG Vice-Chancellor, Professor Toyin Ogundipe said that robotic is to make work easier for people.

He explained: ‘’If you go to the mining areas, you need to go in there and start looking at the area to know if there is going to be accident but these people have been able to do something with robotics. Robots will go into the mining area with the censor and give information that will be recorded into the computer. Someone will be somewhere recording the activity going on there.

According to him, the institution is exposing its students to robotics inorder to be relevant locally and can compete globally.

It is going to improve our innovative ideas, looking at it, you find out that the younger ones are being innovative. There are some of them that just sit in the house and are getting lot of money, attending to a lot of people all over the world, there are some that are doing transcription and some translating in their comfort zone. They call them online and they do the job and are paid online.

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