New Reality: Where Lasers Can Replace Human Beings

In the late 1950s, Soviet researchers Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov and their US counterpart Charles Townes developed the first sources of coherent radiation. This photo shows the first quantum generator (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation/maser), developed by Soviet physicists Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov who received the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Unlike stationary laboratories, first-generation lasers could generate extremely powerful magnetic fields. This unique property turned lasers into a promising research tool.

This photo shows an engineer operating a quantum generator. 1969.

Laser units began to be upgraded regularly throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, with their maximum power increasing all the time. They also became more affordable.

This photo shows surgeons treating a patient with impaired eyesight at an Eye Clinic. 1968.

Lasers are used in surgery and diagnostics, welding, material-cutting operations, metrology and chemistry. They are the main element of just about any physics laboratory.

This 1987 photo shows engineers using a laser beam to drill holes inside composite materials.

According to scientists, laser technologies, due to emerge in the near future, will virtually oust human beings from the production process. The development of additive manufacturing technologies facilitates this trend.

This photo shows a metal segment being cut by a 400-watt ytterbium fiber laser, mounted on a robot manipulator.

Additive manufacturing technology will make it possible to “grow” entire systems, rather than their separate components, that cannot be created using any other methods.

This photo shows a five-kilowatt ytterbium fiber laser welding system and a robot manipulator.

Fitters, turners and milling machine operators therefore become “weak links” lacking sufficient skills to create any specific object. Instead of standing near a machine-tool, human beings will have to develop the required production process at this stage. And laser systems will do all the rest.

This photo shows a student from NRNU MEPhI’s Institute of Laser and Plasma Technologies (LAPLAS) working on a module of laser technology contest’s assignment (color laser marking of metals) during a WorldSkills competition.

At the same time, human beings have to generate additional creative ideas, also developing virtual objects. And laser systems will be used during all the subsequent research and development stages.

This photo shows a postgraduate student from the Faculty of Laser Physics at NRNU MEPhI’s Institute of Laser and Plasma Technologies (LAPLAS) adjust a 3.5-kilowatt ytterbium fiber laser spray-coating system that uses the direct laser-growing process.

Acting Director of NRNU MEPhI’s Institute of Laser and Plasma Technologies (LAPLAS) Andrei Kuznetsov believes that the steadily developing laser science will soon make it possible to make a clock that would fall just one micro-second short during the entire lifespan of the Universe and which would quickly react to gravitational fluctuations. In his opinion, it will also become possible to harness thermonuclear energy.

This photo shows LAPLAS postgraduate students adjust a machine-tool with a robot manipulator and a 400-watt ytterbium fiber laser system.

Laser technologies can make virtual objects a reality overnight, when technologies are the whole chain: an idea, working it and getting accepted in production. Therefore fundamental research is now history.

This photo shows a laser system cut through a diamond crystal at Kristall Jewelry Plant in Smolensk.