AQA GCSE Design and Technology

New technology changes how things are made, who makes them, how they are sold and what people expect from them. A designer has to judge each change from several points of view at once: the business, the worker, the user, the community and the planet. ## Industry **Automation** means machines doing tasks with little or no human control, and **robots** are the programmable machines that do much of it. A robot arm on a car line welds or paints the same joint thousands of times to the same standard, works through the night and never tires, and it can be sent into places that are dangerous for people, such as paint booths full of fumes. The cost is the price of buying and programming the equipment, and the jobs that repetitive manual work used to provide. Workers are retrained to programme, maintain and supervise the machines, so the job changes more often than it disappears. The layout of a workplace changes around the machinery. Factories are planned around robot cells and conveyors, with guarding to keep people clear of moving arms. Collaborative robots (cobots) are built with force sensors and rounded shapes so they can work beside a person without a cage. Offices have moved towards hot desking, video meetings and working from home, which reduces the floor space a company needs. Buildings themselves use new technology. Sensors switch lighting and heating off in empty rooms, smart meters track energy use, parts are made off site as prefabricated modules and assembled quickly…