There are few examples of automation which show that automation is not a recent happening in our lives. Human beings have always dreamt of how to make their lives easier and have sought to do this by creating machines that will do the job for them. Technological advancement has made this dream come true by automation.
This post will give you several examples of automation in our everyday life, office, industry, medical and other automation systems examples that we have.
According to Techopedia, Automation is the creation of technology and its application in order to control and monitor the production and delivery of various goods and services. It performs tasks that were previously performed by humans. Automation is being used in a number of areas such as manufacturing, transport, utilities, defence, facilities, operations and lately, information technology”.
From this definition, you can see that we use automation in different places to ease the burden of work on human beings by transferring them to machines.
There are several ways automation has affected our lives today. Most of the examples of automation are seen in our homes, in the workplace, in the manufacturing sector and all aspects of our lives on this earth. Automation cuts across everything we do.
We begin with how it affects our offices.
Examples of Automation in our daily lives.
1. Employment of Staff
Employment for any job opening in your organization can be tough especially if you advertise the vacancy in online job portals.
Whether you require 2 or 3 staff and place the vacancy internally, you would get hundreds of thousands applying for this position. It becomes a huge job to sift through tones of curriculum vitae and application letters.
To solve this problem, you must use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to sift the wheat from the chaff. The popular one many Human resources managers use is TALEO. Others are JazzHR, Greenhouse, Oracle Human Capital Management and SmartRecruiters.
The use of these computer applications are examples of automation.
How do you use this ATS system? All you need to do is input the keywords you expect your prospective employees to have and allow the machine to process this data in a few seconds.
You gain speed but make sure you check for machine errors.
2. Fixing Time for Meetings
In most offices, fixing the best time for meeting eternal business partners can be a difficult task to pull off easily. Hence, the use of artificial computer applications to solve this scheduling problem.
Use Boomerang Calendar, a Gmail plugin to schedule your meeting easily. other meeting scheduling apps include Calendly, Doodle and FreeBusy.
3. Use of Automation in our Homes
There are many ways we use automation in our homes. For example, you use automation to solve a tedious task that is monotonous. For example, washing clothes, ironing clothes, and sweeping and cleaning your upholstery in the house can be tiring.
Nowadays you use machines such as a washing machine, dishwasher, etc. to wash and keep your clothes and plates clean.
You can also use tools with sensor and remote control to open doors and lock them, turn lights on and off.
4. Automobile Car Assembly Plants
The next examples of automation are in the automobile industry. Here, robots assemble cars and do all the dangerous work that Men cannot do. For example, jobs that are dangerous or involve fire and lots of precision demand the use of machine intelligence.
5. Global Positioning System
In your car, you have a global position system (GPS) device that will automatically tell you when there is a traffic jam somewhere and give you alternative routes to take.
When you look at the work done by GPS, you would notice that it is a good example of automation.
6. Use of Auto Pilot to Fly Airplanes
Other examples of automation are found in the airline industry. Here, take-off, flying and landing of big aeroplanes are automated.
Recently, you will observe that big aeroplane take off and land easily unlike in the past when everything was done manually. However, pilots still supervise the work of these machines pilots.
7. Automation in the Manufacturing business
In big manufacturing plants all over the world, machines are taking over the tedious work of manufacturing big or complicated items.
For example, in the manufacturing of computer motherboards where chips and microchips are laid in tight-fitting motherboards, you use machines to automatically do that work.
8. Use of the Television Remote Control
We all have televisions at home and to ease the routine of flipping channels, we now use a remote control mechanism. With this tool, you are able to switch from one channel to another to watch whatever you want and enjoy yourself.
9. Air conditioners
This is a heat control or climate control mechanism that you use to change the climate of any environment to make it conducive for your use. In your cars, you also have air-conditioners as well to control heat or cold in the car. The machines work with sensors and thermostats.
10. Use of Laser-Guided Machines for Surgery
In specialist hospitals where you do complicated surgeries on evasive parts of the body, you use laser guided technology to do these operations to the eye and the brain.
11. Computer
You can classify computers as examples of automation in our daily lives. Why is that so? The computer is an impute device that takes messages by keyboard. The computer has taken away the tedious task of using typewriters to work and you now do things at a faster pace.
For instance, financial institutions use automated computer operations to give you fast banking services. You can now print your bank statement from your internet-enabled smartphones.
12. Scanners and Satellites
We use scanners to take pictures of documents and output on them to digital media or on hard copy by printing it using printers. This is an example of automation.
You have many types of Satellites which astronomers launch into the sky and the moon. You cannot launch them without the use of computer programs and codes. They must go to specific places to stay in the sky or orbit.
13. Broadcasting Technology
The use of broadcast technology to send messages and pictures is done using artificial intelligence mechanisms.
The broadcaster transmits pictures and voice to your radio or television receivers which you tune to specific channels to get particular broadcasts you want are clear examples of automation.
14. Gates and Doors
Some modern gates and doors now use a remote control to open and close it to make life easy for the users. These are examples of automation. You can find doors and gates in big office complexes and shopping malls where they use this system.
15. Navigation of Ships
All kinds of navigation need some guidance and control.
In the modern ships of today, their control rooms are more like the dashboard of an aeroplane.
The rudder which the captain uses to control the movement of the ship is enabled by a computer-aided mechanism that automatically scans the route of the ship to make sure it gets to its destination easily.
16. Going to the Moon with Rockets
You propel space ships and rockets by using computer aids. This space ships must use navigation aids from artificial intelligence like a car’s brain box. So, it has its own control processes. If it does not follow this route it will miss its target and crash.
17. Weather forecast
You can see that nowadays the weather forecasts are accurate and done for weeks and they will still be accurate. Have you wondered why this is easy to do?
Well! For your information, it is done using the computer chips and codes and other complicated programs which computer experts input in the weather machines. This for sure is among real-world examples of automation. Without automation, these machines cannot forecast the weather accurately.
18. Manufacture and Packaging
In a manufacturing plant, when you finish producing the next thing to do is package the goods.
Without automation, packaging of goods will be a hit or miss affair. But with the aid of automated machine processes, you see goods neatly packaged.
Manufacturing and packaging of goods are examples of automation systems. A simple example is the production of milk. The producers use assembly type production to mass produce and package the finished products for sale.
19. Oil Drilling
Those that work in the petroleum industry use machines that work in depths of the sea to be able to drill through rocks until they find oil.
These drilling machines cannot do this work well without automation. Despite the calculation men do, you need the machines to do the main task of searching for this oil deep in the earth. If you don’t call this another automation example nothing else will fit the billing.
20. Drones
You send drones on errands. This is a tiny aircraft that fly at a certain height. You can use them to take area pictures and do videos of places a man cannot easily reach. This adds to the list of examples of automation you can quickly accept without any doubts.
Related: 9 Positive Effects of Computer in Our Daily Lives
Conclusion
You can see examples of automation in various aspects of our daily lives. Without automation, in our homes, work and industry, the production of good and services will be very hard.
Technology is breaking new grounds daily to make things better for you.
The fear that machines will one day make all men redundant is real. Before that day happens, continue to enjoy the leisure automation has given to you and me.
