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Age of Robots

Age of Robots
Joseph F. Engelberger, an American physicist, engineer, and businessman, recognized as Father of Robotics. In 1959 the first robot prototype was developed - the Unimate #001 – by Engelberger. General Motors was the first to take interest, installing the Unimate #001 on its production line. This colossal event revolutionized manufacturing and marked the birth of the robotics industry.
Robot means electro-mechanical equipment that mechanizes, augment or help human activities, autonomously or according to set commands, frequently by a computer program & robotics means study of robots.
Robots having improved alertness symbolize the dawn of a new age and their omnipresence may improve our quality of life. Robotic abilities will establish the missing link between the digital and physical worlds soon. It will be interesting to enlist few abilities of robots that help define performance parameters. Few crucial abilities of robots include but not limited to a) Interaction & mobility, b) Configuration & adaptability and c) Perception, cognizance with surrounding atmosphere to achieve decision making potential.
Complex integration of selected abilities of robots can help carry out several types of tasks and functions like a) grasping & exploration, b) inspection & manipulation to interact with nearby environment. It may prove to set benchmark performance.
Most commercially successful robots (robotic arms) used mainly in the automotive industry to manufacture cars for the last 50 years. The prevalent shift for the subsequent 10 years will be enormous increase in mobile robots. Robots have been used in various industrial units, as investigative vehicle in space and deep sea, as tools in several minimally invasive surgical procedures, as exoskeletal artificial limbs etc. These technological advances in robotics for the last few years seem to be impressive. 
Advances in robotics technology are making human-machine collaboration an everyday reality. Better and cheaper sensors help robot understand and respond in an adaptive and flexible manner to its environment. Robots now a days are becoming more connected due to cloud-computing and able to access commands and information remotely, thus may bypass programming to work as a fully independent entity.
Smaller robots such as Dexter-Bot, Baxter etc are agile to handle manufacturing tasks that are painstaking to humans. In this new age of robotics, intelligent systems shall never take a halt at personal virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri. Farmers will start using robots for precision agriculture, also known as satellite farming for site specific crop management to control weed and for harvesting using GPS (Global Positioning System) technology. Robots will play an important role in healthcare industry performing nursing. They will help stroke patients to regain control of their limbs.
CES, a global consumer electronics and consumer technology tradeshow will always be remembered as the show featuring future robots1 like
·     Airbot an airport guide robot by LG, which will appear at Incheon airport in South Korea later this year.
·     Lego Boost turns all your Lego constructions into robots.
·     Leka is designed to help special-needs children better understand social and visual cues.
·     Ziro is a kit that lets you build robots and control them with just your hand.
·     Robot vac will respond to cues via Facebook Messenger.
·     Olly will bridge the divide between smart home hubs and smart home robots.
·     Aristotle is part robot, part baby monitor.

It is interesting to see that the current $25bn market for robotics is expected to grow to $123bn by 20262.
ROBOTS 3D is a movie by national geographic about Humanoid robot. A humanoid robot is a robot with its body character built to look like the human body. ROBOTS 3D tries to give answer to questions like if a humanoid robot can do anything a human can do without the advantage of a human brain? Can scientists imitate some of the particularly challenging human characteristics?  The movie showcases the latest developments, success and failure of robotics around the world.  ROBOTS 3D is a sneak glance into the future featuring innovative engineering and design by scientists to make cyber characters less "humanoid" and more just bare human3. 

Image: Robots are seen at the “Hannover Messe” industrial trade fair in Hanover. REUTERS/Morris Mac Matzen.
Robotics will dominate the upcoming decade. It has potential to transform lives and work environment. Its impact will grow over time as will the interaction between robots and people. Elon Musk, Tesla & SpaceX CEO, known for his futuristic ideas said that humans with biological intelligence need to merge with machines having digital intelligence to become a sort of cyborg in order to become immaterial in the age of robots & artificial intelligence (AI). Though the next generation of robotics poses novel questions w.r.t. philosophy, anthropology & about the human relationship to machines but humans still have the edge. This is corroborated by Prof. Bob Knight from University of California, Berkeley, Dept of psychology and neuroscience. He stated that human emotions influence the decisions and computers will never have complex equivalent decision making ability like humans.

References:
1.        https://www.cnet.com/au/news/all-the-robots-of-ces-2017/
2.        http://www.idtechex.com/research/reports/robotics-2016-2026-000458.asp
3.        http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/robots/

The Doctor

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