REAL LIFE NEWS: BETTY THE ROBOT OFFICE MANAGER
by Hazed
Worried about a robot replacing you at work? Well, if you’re an office manager, you should be – because Betty the Robot is coming for your job.
Betty is the first robotic office manager in Britain. She’s been programmed with the latest artificial intelligence software, and has been deployed in a workplace in Milton Keynes to see how well she integrates with the staff over the next two months.
Her job will be to trundle down corridors and around desks, to monitor staff and check environmental conditions.
She will also greet guests, and keep track of stationery items such as staplers and hole-punches, logging if they are out of place. If the fire-door is left open, she’ll send out an alert. She’ll also be monitoring the environment, making sure temperature and humidity levels are set correctly.
Betty has been created by researchers at Birmingham University, and is working at The Transport Systems Catapult, an innovation hub. Her creators hope the experiment will show that robots can learn in their environments.
It will be interesting to see how the staff feel about having a robot colleague. Maybe if she learns to make tea they will accept her.
