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What will life be like in fifty years? Will our home life be more comfortable? Will our jobs become easier? Will our health become better due to new technology? It is most likely to turn out this way. According to scientists, robots will be doing our yard work, taking over some of our jobs, and monitoring our health on a daily basis. Does this sound unbelievable? This might just be the kind of world our grandchildren will grow up in. The science and technology that deals with robots is called robotics. The word "robot" was introduced to the public by the Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek in his play R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots). Published in 1920. The term "robotics" was coined by Isaac Asimov in his 1941 science fiction short-story "Liar". They can perform a wide variety of tasks; jobs that are repetitious and boring or difficult. some of the hazardous jobs are handling material such a blood or urine samples, searching buildings for fugitives and deep water search. Or jobs too dangerous for people to perform. Robots come in different sizes and shapes. Few resemble humans as is frequently depicted in science fiction. Most are stationary machines with a single arm that lifts or moves objects and uses tools.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics)
Engineers have developed mobile robots with video cameras for sight and electronic sensors for touch. Such robots might be used on the ocean floor at depths man is unable to reach and in planetary exploration and other scientific research. In the early 1800’s, they built the first machine in Europe. In 1801, Joseph Maria Jacquard made the next great change and invented the automatic draw loom. The draw loom was used to control the lifting of thread in fabric factories. There were many small changes in robotics but we were slowly moving forward. In 1950 Isaac Asimov came up with laws for robots for example: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm and something like this. 700,000 robots were in the industrial world in 1995 and over 500,000 we used in Japan and about 120,000 in Western Europe and 60,000 in the United States and many were doing tasks too dangerous or unpleasant for humans.(http://www.bsu.edu/web/mawilliams/history.html)
Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robots. A first particular new innovation in robot design is the opensourcing of robot-projects.The term "Generation Robots" was coined by Professor Hans Moravec, a Principal Research Scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute in describing the near future evolution of robot technology. The first generation robots, Moravec predicted in 1997, should have an intellectual capacity comparable to perhaps a lizard and should become available by 2010. Because the first generation robot would be incapable of learning. However, Moravec predicts that the second generation robot would be an improvement over the first generation and become available by 2020.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics)
The second is Evolutionary Robots and it means a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to develop controllers for autonomous robots, specially the body form, or motion and behavior controllers. Researchers use this method both to create better robots, and to explore the nature of evolution, because the process requires generations of robots to be simulated. Currently, there are about 1 million industrial robots around the world, and Japan is the top country having a high density of robots in its manufacturing industry.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics)
Perhaps the most dramatic changes in the future robots will arise from their increasing ability. Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly from university laboratories to practical application in industry, and machines are being developed that can perform tasks, such as strategic planning and learning from experience. If you think back just ten years and look at the technology compared to today's it is unbelievable to think how far we have came. Although the future is unpredictable we can count on the evolution of these machines.(
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