Robotics

Robotics is the science of designing, building, and using Robots for a set of tasks. The term is first attributed to Isaac Asimov, a university professor and Science fiction writer, un his short story Runaround, published in 1942.

The most popular applications of robotics is in manufaturing.

While Industrial robots were first marketed in 1960, it has only been recently that consumer robotic products been developed. Among the most popular are the Sony's Aibo, Wowee's Robosapien, Roboraptor, and Robosapien V2, and the as-yet un-released Pleo. Robots are also used to great effect in industrial manufacturing plants for automated tasks.

Unusually, the driving force for much development in robotics may be due the effoers of Science fiction. Authors such as Isaac Asimov esentially defined the popular perception of a robot, and their works may have been the inspiration for the current genereation of roboticists.

Robots have been featured in literature and movies. The most significant works were written by Asimov, who coined the Three Laws of Robotics. Asimov's work has been referenced in the movies Bicentennial Man, Artificial Intelligence, and I, Robot. While many other movies have featured robots, these movies make specific reference to the Three Laws.

It is theorized by some futurists (such as Ray Kurzweil) that individual computers will surprass the computational capabilities of a single human brain by 2020 or 2025. Robotics as a science is thus likely to become more popular in the coming years.

External Links

A Hstory Timeline of Robotics http://trueforce.com/Articles/Robot_History.htm