Interesting facts about robotics

The term "robotics" refers to the technology that has the main purpose in creating the mechanical intelligent agents called robots.

The term "robot" was first coined by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. while term "robotics" was first coined by Isaac Asimov in his 1941 science fiction short-story "Liar!".

The great Leonardo Da Vinci has predicted the creation of robots in future.

At first mechanics was the great force behind the development of robots but as the science became more technologically advanced mechanics was replaced with electronics. The first digital and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and is famous under the name of Unimate.

RoboCup World Championship (the soccer games with robots) which started in 1997 is often used as a testing ground regarding the robot's dynamics and locomotion.

The holy grail of robotics is to improve AI intelligence, particularly to create robots that would be able to integrate knowledge and put information into context so that they could make decisions in a split second.

The original idea behind creating robots was to use them do the work of humans, particularly hard work or work in a dangerous environment. Robots which must work instead of humans require some way to manipulate objects; pick up, modify, destroy, or otherwise have an effect and so far the science is finding it very hard to recreate human moves in robots. Mr. Data is sadly still far far away :)

The current existing robots can walk or run but this movement doesn't look that similar to humans and it also uses great deal of energy which means that robotics needs to make future robots more energy efficient.

Most today's mobile robots have wheels instead of legs.

Today's robots are used for various purposes all the way from vacuuming floors, mowing lawns, cleaning drains to investigating other planets, building cars, as well as being used in military operations.

Asia is believed to have more than half of all the robots in the world (particularly Japan that has over the 30% of all the robots in the world).

There are some people who believe that the future development in robotics will cause big unemployment because robots would be able to do the skilled work better than humans, not to mention the fact that they would likely be more than able to exceed the capability of workers to perform most jobs.