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Tuesday, January 07, 2020

Robotic Process Automation

Good intro piece in O'Reilly on RPA.  Thoughtful,  though somewhat limiting in scope.  Its an excellent starting point, but can also be seen as a framework for more complex and  'intelligent' solutions.   When we wrote complex 'expert systems' in the 90s, they naturally morphed from the inclusion of human process.

Radar / Innovation & Disruption
Why you should care about robotic process automation
A look into what robotic process automation (RPA) is, why it matters, and why it’s garnered so much recent interest.

By Sunil Ranka, Roger Magoulas and Steve Swoyer
November 21, 2019

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In a classic 1983 paper, cognitive psychologist Lisanne Bainbridge drew attention to a curious irony: so-called “automated” systems were, in practice, usually attended by one or more human operators.

The more advanced the system, she observed, “the more crucial…the contribution of the human operator.” Bainbridge believed that automation designers were in denial about this, however. As she saw it, designers approached the problem of automation as if the human factor were not, in fact, a factor. This resulted in systems that left their (inevitable) human operators “with an arbitrary collection of tasks” with respect to which “little thought may have been given to providing support.”

This is precisely the kind of problem that robotic process automation (RPA) aims to address.  ... "

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