Robots to the Rescue

The first one is pretty mundane, but telling for the future. That is the Walmart robot that is scanning shelves to make for a more efficient and effective merchandising of what they have to sell. Check out Walmart reveals why it has robots roaming the aisles in 50 of its stores. This is the type of program that is easily scalable, ramping up to all of their stores. 

The next usage of robots is much more of a "one off" prototype after prototype for the Japan nuclear plants that had melt-downs following the earthquake and tsunami that caused the plants to lose all commercial and back-up electrical power. See this 60 Minutes segment, Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

With all the money they are pouring into the robotics function, they are sure to have discoveries that will have much broader applications in the future. 

If you have not followed the progress of the clean-up, you will see the difficulty, the extent of the impacts, the cost and the duration of the clean-up effort. This project is going to be many decades long.