robotics
In plain wordsThe science and engineering of building robots and making them work: designing their bodies, sensors and motors, and writing the software that lets them see, plan and move safely.
The engineering and scientific discipline devoted to robotsrobot, n.: A machine that senses its surroundings, decides what to do and physically acts, moving itself or handling objects, with some independence from a human operator. Factory arms, robot vacuums and self-driving cars are all robots.: how to design, build, power, program and control machines that sense and act in the physical world. It combines mechanical and electrical engineering (mechanisms, actuatorsactuator, n.: The 'muscle' of a machine: a motor or similar device that turns electrical, hydraulic or air power into movement, such as turning a robot's joint or closing its gripper., sensors), control theorycontrol theory, n.: The mathematics of making machines behave as intended by constantly measuring what they are doing and correcting them, as a thermostat, cruise control or self-balancing robot does. and dynamics, and computer science (motion planningmotion planning, n.: Working out how a robot should move from where it is to where it needs to be, without hitting anything and within the limits of what its body can do., state estimation and mappingsimultaneous localization and mapping, n.: How a robot, drone or headset builds a map of an unfamiliar place while at the same time working out where it is on that map, using its cameras or laser scanners., software architecture), and increasingly machine learningmachine learning, n.: A way of building software that learns from examples instead of following rules written by a programmer. Shown thousands of labeled photos, for instance, a program can learn to recognize cats.. Its classical core problems are kinematicsforward kinematics, n.: The math that works out where a robot's hand or tool ends up, given the angles of all its joints, by chaining together the movement each joint adds. and dynamics, control, perceptionperception, n.: How an AI system or robot turns raw sensor signals, such as camera pixels, microphone sound or laser scans, into an understanding of what is around it: objects, people, words and distances., planning, manipulationmanipulation, n.: A robot's use of arms, hands or grippers to change the world around it: picking things up, moving, pushing, opening, assembling or using tools. and locomotionlocomotion, n.: How a robot moves itself from place to place: rolling on wheels, walking on legs, crawling, swimming or flying.; major application areas include manufacturing, logistics, medicine, agriculture, exploration, defense and transport. From the 2010s, deep learningdeep learning, n.: Machine learning done with neural networks built from many stacked layers: raw data such as pixels, sound or text goes in at one end, and each layer turns what it receives into something more abstract. and then robot foundation modelsrobot foundation model, n.: One large AI model trained on huge amounts of robot and internet data so that it can control many robots on many tasks, and be adapted quickly to new ones. began to replace hand-engineered pipelines with learned, end-to-end policiespolicy, n.: An AI agent's strategy: the rule it follows to pick an action in each situation. Training in reinforcement learning means improving this rule until it earns high rewards., a shift described as robot learningrobot learning, n.: Teaching robots skills from data and experience, such as watching demonstrations, practicing by trial and error or training in simulation, instead of programming every movement by hand. or physical AIphysical AI, n.: AI built to work in the physical world rather than on a screen: the intelligence inside robots, self-driving cars, drones and other machines that must sense real surroundings and move through them.. The field's main academic venues include the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) and the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).
She moved from computer vision into robotics because she wanted her models to touch the world.
Origin
Isaac Asimov's short story 'Liar!', published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1941, is the earliest use recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary; Asimov later said he had assumed the word already existed, by analogy with 'mechanics', and wrongly placed its first appearance in 'Runaround' (1942). Engineers adopted it as industrial robots spread in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the 1980s it named journals, conferences and professional societies.
Usage note
Robotics and AI overlap but are not the same field: much of robotics is mechanical design and classical control, and most AI never touches a robot. 'Robotic' is also used loosely to mean mechanical or emotionless.
Related
- robotrobot, n.: A machine that senses its surroundings, decides what to do and physically acts, moving itself or handling objects, with some independence from a human operator. Factory arms, robot vacuums and self-driving cars are all robots.
- robot learningrobot learning, n.: Teaching robots skills from data and experience, such as watching demonstrations, practicing by trial and error or training in simulation, instead of programming every movement by hand.
- embodied AIembodied AI, n.: AI that has a body, usually a robot and sometimes a simulated character, and learns or acts by sensing and moving in a world rather than only processing text or images.
- control theorycontrol theory, n.: The mathematics of making machines behave as intended by constantly measuring what they are doing and correcting them, as a thermostat, cruise control or self-balancing robot does.
- motion planningmotion planning, n.: Working out how a robot should move from where it is to where it needs to be, without hitting anything and within the limits of what its body can do.
- manipulationmanipulation, n.: A robot's use of arms, hands or grippers to change the world around it: picking things up, moving, pushing, opening, assembling or using tools.
- locomotionlocomotion, n.: How a robot moves itself from place to place: rolling on wheels, walking on legs, crawling, swimming or flying.
- physical AIphysical AI, n.: AI built to work in the physical world rather than on a screen: the intelligence inside robots, self-driving cars, drones and other machines that must sense real surroundings and move through them.
- artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them.
Sources
- Asimov, I. (1941). Liar! Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941.
- Siciliano, B. & Khatib, O. (eds.) (2016). Springer Handbook of Robotics, 2nd ed. Springer.
Mentioned in
artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them., robotrobot, n.: A machine that senses its surroundings, decides what to do and physically acts, moving itself or handling objects, with some independence from a human operator. Factory arms, robot vacuums and self-driving cars are all robots., cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI., DARPA Grand ChallengeDARPA Grand Challenge, prop. n.: A series of US government-sponsored races for driverless vehicles held in 2004, 2005 and 2007. No robot finished the first race; within three years, cars were navigating mock city traffic., digital twindigital twin, n.: A detailed virtual copy of a real machine, factory, robot or city, kept in sync with live sensor data and used to monitor it, test changes safely and predict problems., Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov, prop. n.: A Russian-born American science-fiction writer and biochemist who invented the Three Laws of Robotics and is credited with the first use of the word 'robotics'., Karel ČapekKarel Čapek, prop. n.: A Czech writer whose 1920 play about artificial workers who rise up against their makers gave the world the word 'robot'., manipulationmanipulation, n.: A robot's use of arms, hands or grippers to change the world around it: picking things up, moving, pushing, opening, assembling or using tools., Moravec's paradoxMoravec's paradox, n.: The observation that what is hard for people, like chess or algebra, is often easy for computers, while what toddlers do effortlessly, such as seeing, walking and picking things up, is very hard for machines., Robot Operating SystemRobot Operating System, prop. n.: Free, widely used software that serves as the plumbing of many robots, letting separate programs for sensors, planning and motors pass messages to each other, with a large library of ready-made tools., robotic process automationrobotic process automation, n.: Software 'robots' that copy the clicks and typing a person would do in office computer programs — such as moving data between forms — to automate repetitive paperwork., Rodney BrooksRodney Brooks, prop. n.: An Australian-American roboticist who argued that intelligence grows out of acting in the world rather than abstract reasoning, and who co-founded the company behind the Roomba vacuum., dexterous manipulationdexterous manipulation, n.: Skilled handling of objects with robot fingers, such as spinning a pen, turning a key or rotating a cube in one hand: the fine finger work people do without thinking., Hans MoravecHans Moravec, prop. n.: An Austrian-born roboticist who observed that skills humans find effortless, like seeing and moving, are the hardest for machines, and who forecast when computers would match the brain., human–robot interactionhuman–robot interaction, n.: The study of how people and robots communicate, cooperate and share spaces, and of how to design robots that people find safe, understandable, trustworthy and pleasant to live or work with., Shakey the robotShakey the robot, prop. n.: A wheeled robot built at a California research institute between 1966 and 1972 that could look around, make a plan and carry it out: the first mobile robot to work out its own steps toward a goal.