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In Japan, robots became popular comic book characters. Robots became cultural icons and the Japanese government was spurred into funding research into robotics. Among the most iconic characters was the Astro Boy, who is taught human feelings such as love, courage and self-doubt. Culturally, robots in Japan became regarded as helpmates to their human counterparts. [68] Polk, Igor (16 November 2005). "RoboNexus 2005 robot exhibition virtual tour". Robonexus Exhibition 2005. Archived from the original on 12 August 2007 . Retrieved 10 September 2007.
TechCast Article Series, Jason Rupinski and Richard Mix, "Public Attitudes to Androids: Robot Gender, Tasks, & Pricing" Moore's Law and the increasing integration of digital electronic components into lightweight and powerful systems on a chip allowed for the heavy computation necessary for the operation of a robotic system to be performed by smaller and smaller devices. Many of these advances in chip and sensor technology were driven by the growth and spread of smartphones, which demanded these new components to meet the increasing demands of everyday use.A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. [2] A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics. As robots have become more advanced and sophisticated, experts and academics have increasingly explored the questions of what ethics might govern robots' behavior, [111] [112] and whether robots might be able to claim any kind of social, cultural, ethical or legal rights. [113] One scientific team has said that it was possible that a robot brain would exist by 2019. [114] Others predict robot intelligence breakthroughs by 2050. [115] Recent advances have made robotic behavior more sophisticated. [116] The social impact of intelligent robots is subject of a 2010 documentary film called Plug & Pray. [117] Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and place them in cooling liquid. [71] [72] "Without any fanfare, the world's first working robot joined the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Ewing Township in the spring of 1961... It was an automated die-casting mold that dropped red-hot door handles and other such car parts into pools of cooling liquid on a line that moved them along to workers for trimming and buffing." Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry. [73] Victor Scheinman at the MIT Museum with a PUMA robot in 2014
Roughly half of all the robots in the world are in Asia, 32% in Europe, and 16% in North America, 1% in Australasia and 1% in Africa. [108] 40% of all the robots in the world are in Japan, [109] making Japan the country with the highest number of robots. National Inventor's Hall of Fame 2011 Inductee". Invent Now. Archived from the original on 4 November 2014 . Retrieved 18 March 2011. A collaborative robot or cobot is a robot that can safely and effectively interact with human workers while performing simple industrial tasks. However, end-effectors and other environmental conditions may create hazards, and as such risk assessments should be done before using any industrial motion-control application. [102] Fears and concerns about robots have been repeatedly expressed in a wide range of books and films. A common theme is the development of a master race of conscious and highly intelligent robots, motivated to take over or destroy the human race. Frankenstein (1818), often called the first science fiction novel, has become synonymous with the theme of a robot or android advancing beyond its creator.Currie, Adam (1999). "The History of Robotics". Archived from the original on 18 July 2006 . Retrieved 10 September 2007. Another common theme is the reaction, sometimes called the " uncanny valley", of unease and even revulsion at the sight of robots that mimic humans too closely. [110] Ashok K. Hemal; Mani Menon (2018). Robotics in Genitourinary Surgery. Springer. pp.8–9. ISBN 978-3-319-20645-5. Modular robots are a new breed of robots that are designed to increase the use of robots by modularizing their architecture. [98] The functionality and effectiveness of a modular robot is easier to increase compared to conventional robots. These robots are composed of a single type of identical, several different identical module types, or similarly shaped modules, which vary in size. Their architectural structure allows hyper-redundancy for modular robots, as they can be designed with more than 8 degrees of freedom (DOF). Creating the programming, inverse kinematics and dynamics for modular robots is more complex than with traditional robots. Modular robots may be composed of L-shaped modules, cubic modules, and U and H-shaped modules. ANAT technology, an early modular robotic technology patented by Robotics Design Inc., allows the creation of modular robots from U and H shaped modules that connect in a chain, and are used to form heterogeneous and homogenous modular robot systems. These "ANAT robots" can be designed with "n" DOF as each module is a complete motorized robotic system that folds relatively to the modules connected before and after it in its chain, and therefore a single module allows one degree of freedom. The more modules that are connected to one another, the more degrees of freedom it will have. L-shaped modules can also be designed in a chain, and must become increasingly smaller as the size of the chain increases, as payloads attached to the end of the chain place a greater strain on modules that are further from the base. ANAT H-shaped modules do not suffer from this problem, as their design allows a modular robot to distribute pressure and impacts evenly amongst other attached modules, and therefore payload-carrying capacity does not decrease as the length of the arm increases. Modular robots can be manually or self-reconfigured to form a different robot, that may perform different applications. Because modular robots of the same architecture type are composed of modules that compose different modular robots, a snake-arm robot can combine with another to form a dual or quadra-arm robot, or can split into several mobile robots, and mobile robots can split into multiple smaller ones, or combine with others into a larger or different one. This allows a single modular robot the ability to be fully specialized in a single task, as well as the capacity to be specialized to perform multiple different tasks.
In 1951 Walter published the paper A Machine that learns, documenting how his more advanced mechanical robots acted as intelligent agent by demonstrating conditioned reflex learning. [18] Glaser, Horst Albert and Rossbach, Sabine: The Artificial Human, Frankfurt/M., Bern, New York 2011 "The Artificial Human. A Tragical History", ebook "The Artificial Humans. A Real History of Robots, Androids, Replicants, Cyborgs, Clones and all the rest" Robot Dreams: The Strange Tale of a Man's Quest To Rebuild His Mechanical Childhood Friend". The Cleveland Free Times. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008 . Retrieved 25 September 2008.
What about autonomy in robots?
Throughout the 2010s, humans continued to examine the nature of their relationships with robots, with trends indicating a general belief that robots were or would become conscious beings deserving of rights, and potential allies or rivals to humans. On 25 October 2017 at the Future Investment Summit in Riyadh, a robot called Sophia and referred to with female pronouns was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot ever to have a nationality. [123] [124] This has attracted controversy, as it is not obvious whether this implies that Sophia can vote or marry, or whether a deliberate system shutdown can be considered murder; as well, it is controversial considering how few rights are given to Saudi human women. [125] [126] Popular works of art in the 2010s, such as HBO's revival of Westworld, encouraged empathy for robots, and explored questions of humanity and consciousness. [127] The development of humanoid robots was advanced considerably by Japanese robotics scientists in the 1970s. [78] Waseda University initiated the WABOT project in 1967, and in 1972 completed the WABOT-1, the world's first full-scale humanoid intelligent robot. [79] Its limb control system allowed it to walk with the lower limbs, and to grip and transport objects with hands, using tactile sensors. Its vision system allowed it to measure distances and directions to objects using external receptors, artificial eyes and ears. And its conversation system allowed it to communicate with a person in Japanese, with an artificial mouth. This made it the first android. [80] [81]
The 2010s were defined by large-scale improvements in the availability, power and versatility of commonly available robotic components, as well as the mass proliferation of robots into everyday life, which caused both optimistic speculation and new societal concerns. In 1941 and 1942, Isaac Asimov formulated the Three Laws of Robotics, and in the process coined the word "robotics". [ citation needed] In 1945 Vannevar Bush published As We May Think, an essay that investigated the potential of electronic data processing. He predicted the rise of computers, digital word processors, voice recognition and machine translation. He was later credited by Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext. [18] Julian Bigelow at The Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (left to right: Bigelow, Herman Goldstine, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and John von Neumann) Main articles: Roboethics and Ethics of artificial intelligence An android, or robot designed to resemble a human, can appear comforting to some people and disturbing to others. [110] AH Reffell & Eric Robot (1928)". Archived from the original on 11 November 2013 . Retrieved 11 November 2013. Mobile robots [86] have the capability to move around in their environment and are not fixed to one physical location. An example of a mobile robot that is in common use today is the automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV). An AGV is a mobile robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or uses vision or lasers. [87] AGVs are discussed later in this article.
An exciting time for robotics
Some have suggested a need to build " Friendly AI", meaning that the advances which are already occurring with AI should also include an effort to make AI intrinsically friendly and humane. [166] Several such measures reportedly already exist, with robot-heavy countries such as Japan and South Korea [167] having begun to pass regulations requiring robots to be equipped with safety systems, and possibly sets of 'laws' akin to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. [168] [169] An official report was issued in 2009 by the Japanese government's Robot Industry Policy Committee. [170] Chinese officials and researchers have issued a report suggesting a set of ethical rules, and a set of new legal guidelines referred to as "Robot Legal Studies." [171] Some concern has been expressed over a possible occurrence of robots telling apparent falsehoods. [172] Mining robots A recent example of human replacement involves Taiwanese technology company Foxconn who, in July 2011, announced a three-year plan to replace workers with more robots. At present the company uses ten thousand robots but will increase them to a million robots over a three-year period. [136] Modular robotic technology is currently being applied in hybrid transportation, [99] industrial automation, [100] duct cleaning [101] and handling. Many research centres and universities have also studied this technology, and have developed prototypes.
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