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Scary Grid Safety Robots
Robotic maintenance will become more commonplace, and you'll just need to get used to it. Even if it conjures up scary images from science fiction of the past.
Robotic Maintenance Enhances Grid Safety During Extreme Heat
— Wevolver (@WevolverApp) June 11, 2025
High summer temperatures pose significant challenges for power grid maintenance. In response, the electric power department in Baoji, Northwest China, has deployed specialized robots to perform high-voltage line… pic.twitter.com/P9ynvwwgsn
I'm sure I've seen this before...
(Maintenance robot reaches out)
Yes, it's from a work by Philip K. Dick.
(Maintenance robot reaches out)
Madness, he thought. The ultimate horror for our paranoid culture; vicious unseen mechanical entities that flit at the edges of our vision, that can go anywhere, that are in our very midst. And there may be an unlimited number of them. One of them following each of us...
(Read more about the robot tracking devices)
Learn lots more about the future of maintenance robots - Compare to the blue collar robot from The Velvet Glove (1956) by Harry Harrison and the repair drone from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson.
Compare to the repair robots from The Well-Oiled Machine (1950) by H.B. Fyfe, the Christmas Bush Motile Robot from Rocheworld (1985) by Robert Forward, the maritime robots from Mare Nostrum (2022) by Bruce Sterling and the maintenance drone (holon) from The Mountain in the Sea (2022) by Ray Naylor.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/21/2025)
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