"Coronavirus has been devastating to
humans, but may well prove a decisive step toward a long-prophesied
Drone Age, when aerial robots begin to shed their Orwellian image as
tools of war and surveillance and become a common feature of daily life,
serving as helpers and, perhaps soon, companions.
“Robots
are so often cast as the bad guys,” said Daniel H. Wilson, a former
roboticist and the author of the 2011 science fiction novel “Robopocalypse.”
“But what’s happening now is weirdly utopic, as opposed to dystopic.
Robots are designed to solve problems that are dull, dirty and
dangerous, and now we have a sudden global emergency in which the
machines we’re used to fearing are uniquely well suited to swoop in and
save the day.”"
