Robotics is a combination of engineering, science, and technology that produces devices known as robots that perform substitution or replication of human beings or human actions.
In Switzerland startups with respect to robotics are becoming as popular as they have never been before.
We are living in times when robots have become a part of our everyday life. Many science fiction writers in the past described the world with robots. One of them was Isaac Asimov who depicted three laws of robotics in his famous book “I, Robot”. Modern engineers follow these laws nowadays with precise accuracy. Let us recall them:
Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Law 2: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First law.
Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second law.
As our world is becoming more and more technologically advanced we must admit that robots now are not a part of fantasy anymore. As an example, we may state that at the beginning of the 21st century about ninety percent of all robots we performing the functions of car assemblers at motorcar factories. They look like mechanisms with arms mostly assigned to welding and screwing.
These days show us that robotics evolved to assignments that are more sophisticated when it comes to exploration in planetary severe conditions, participation in law enforcement activities, adoption of surgical treatment, and assistance in rescue operations.
Definition of a Robot
All robots are featured with specific characteristics. Let us review the most evident of them:
- A robot is a machine built as a set of mechanical parts. Every robot is designed for its specific task to perform. The mechanical nature of all robots allows them to achieve their objectives in conditions where human beings would not be able to succeed. For instance, we may mention a robot called “Perseverance” that landed on Mars in February 2021. This rover has its wheels constructed with titanium, where each of the wheels is separately motorized.
- The mechanical parts of a robot are supported by electrical components. These electrical elements provide control and power for the machinery. The most important is electrical power obtained from a battery, which is an immanent part of such machines.
- Computerized programming is another indispensable feature applied to all robots at least to some extent. Such programs are assigned for commands that tell a robot when, how, and what it must do.
As time goes by the development of robotics facilities grows together with software and artificial intelligence that become more and more advanced. Further, we will have robots that are smarter than current models and will be more energy and cost-efficient. Smart factories will require them to carry out complicated tasks and preserve global supply chains from sudden obstacles.
Production of robots will speed up the achievement of goals in the exploration of deep seas and the unfathomable space of our universe, which has always been a dream of humankind.
Types of Robots
All robots are produced in different sizes and shapes that are relevant to the objectives they are supposed to perform. Functionality, design, and levels of autonomy are the features where robots differ from each other. For example, a tiny robotic crawling crab created by Northwestern University with a size of 0.5 millimeters, or 600 feet-long robotic tank vessel “Vindskip”. These robots are designed to do tasks that cannot be done by humans.
We may distinguish five main types of robots that discharge their tasks in accordance with their design and abilities:
- Programmed Robots. Pre-programmed bots carry out uncomplicated and repeated actions within a managed environment. For instance, they are utilized as mechanical arms or automatic assembly tracks. The purpose of such an arm is just to weld something on something, to attach some detail to some part of a gear, and so on. Such robots will do these tasks quickly, accurately, and without fatigue so long as electric current powers them.
- Human-like Robots. Androids are the type of robots that try to replicate human appearance and behavior. Usually, they do the actions that humans would do. For instance, walking, running, or carrying things. If an objective requires they may even have a realistically looking human face and mimic.
- Self-contained Robots. Autonomous robots perform their activity without human supervision. They are really a one-of-a-kind type since they conceive everything around them with the help of their sensors and then in correspondence with acquired information, they make the most optimal decision on what to do next. The best examples are modern autonomous cleaning bots (vacuum cleaners) and drones.
- Remote-controlled Robots. Teleoperated robots are considered to be semi-autonomous robots that use a radio network for human operation and control maintained at a certain range. For instance, when a human operates the robot from a safe distance trying to fix something in the depth of a sea or clearing minefields with a drone on a battlefield.
- VR Robots. Augmenting robots are designed to change human capabilities enhancing their strength, speed, and so on. Moreover, such robots may replace some lost human capabilities. For instance, due to an accident, a human may lose his or her limb, and here comes a robot that can be used as a prosthetic limb.
Software Robotics
This type of robotics is represented by bots. Bots are considered to be computer programs that perform their duties in autonomous mode. One of the most vivid examples can be chatbots. This type of a robot is designed to simulate communication online and via the phone and is frequently used in customer service letting humans be busy with more skillful work. There are several types of software bots:
- Chatbots: perform ordinary communication mostly as far as customer service is concerned.
- Spam bots: search and collect emails in order to send spam to them.
- Download bots: download applications and software in automated mode.
- Search engine bots: scan various websites in order to make them visible to search engines.
- Monitoring bots: discharge reports regarding the speed and status of all websites.
The location of such bots is limited within the internet space, which does not allow to consider them as full-featured robots.
