Past Present Future

Robots have been around for quite a while now. From their first appearances, to where they stand now, they have come a long way through technical developments. And, we are already getting used to the idea of them helping us. But to what extent? At what point can we see a robot in every household, not only helping us with day to day tasks, but also with more sophisticated issues. In many different companies, they are already dependent on robots. This is due to their newly found mobility. Just think of Amazon’s latest delivery, hovering robot and you will know what we are talking about.

From Nanobots to da Vinci surgical robots, each offers different and important business values that can be seen in logistics, the medical sector, space and the U.S. army. We have seen how robots are able to improve the driving abilities of the Bugatti Veyron or to drive a car completely on its own, thanks so artificial intelligence. The da Vinci surgical robot represents a new era in medical technology, as it helps to eliminate human error. The robots that have been developed by NASA have done a lot of research for us, which we could never have done on our own. And just as well, the U.S. army is helped by robots in places where no human being can go.

Humanoids are the group of robots that represent the most tangible and most typical human-machine interaction. Think back to R2D2 and then take a look at Asimo. The features of robots today are much more humanlike, as their faces resemble a human's. Their intelligence is so advanced that we are really starting to feel and treat them as human beings. The way they are able to recognize objects and persons, to react in different situations without any intervention, creates the opportunity to employ them in a wide range of activities: from serving a dinner in a restaurant to doing dangerous rescues in a nuclear plant. Together, we are approaching a new age of robot-human collaboration.

But of course we still have a long way to go. As many of the advanced robots are still in the beginning stages of development, small productions often come with big costs. Every new invention, every new step towards artificial intelligence presents new problems. Robots are dependent on the way we create and program them; that means that they are a product of the human mind, and therefore bound to human errors. Their mobility has already come a long way: Asimo can run up and down stairs and the Packbot can pick itself up. But still, they are a long way away from the movements and the mobility of a human being. Another constraint, that we as human beings also lack, is power. We need food and sleep, just as robots need to recharge their batteries.  Hopefully over time, these limitations will be eliminated one by one. But, we are going to have to wait a little longer before we can send a robot to get our groceries, or let a robot bring goods from a distributor to a retail centre.