The future may hold the first artificially intelligent robotic androids in our society. Could these be the next generation of human beings? This could be the first step toward a very interesting future. There is going to be some form of robotic systems interacting with us and our culture, if we allow it to.
A robotic system, also called an autonomous robotic or artificial intelligent robot, is a computer program which performs specific tasks or activities with a high level of autonomy (with little or no external input). More specifically, it is a computer program that can perform a task or move around on its own. Robotic autonomy is considered to be a new subfield of artificial intelligence, robotics and computer science. This emerging field of study hopes to replicate human behavior so it can be better understood and used in other fields like medicine, manufacturing, diagnostics, safety, and security.
Some believe that we are already using autonomous robots in war, especially in the battlefields. The development and use of autonomous weapons will give soldiers the advantage of surprise, which is necessary for a battle against a highly determined enemy. Will this technology eventually replace human soldiers? It is hard to say, but it is a very real possibility today.
Robotic Systems have been around since the 1950s, when the military started using them to operate radar systems, mines, land mines, trucks, and other heavy equipment automation. Over the years, more sophisticated autonomous mobile robots and systems have been developed. These machines are called autonomous robots or remotely operated vehicles (ROV). Remotely operated vehicles have many of the same characteristics of an autonomous robots like flexibility, speed, robustness, and the ability to reconfigure themselves. For instance, it can be configured to run in complete darkness, go into stealth mode, navigate, work in difficult weather conditions, go over enemy territory, and come out on the other side without being seen. In fact, some of these vehicles can drive autonomously underwater.
One of the most exciting areas of robotics research is Artificial Intelligence. Researchers at Google, Amazon, and Facebook are working together to develop self-driving cars, trucks, and buses that can drive autonomously in every situation imaginable. However, while an autonomous vehicle is capable of driving itself, it doesn’t have any of the human instinct of “manship”. Until recently, robots had the same problem as humans – when there was a problem, they needed to take human intervention to solve it. In the future, artificial intelligence will fully take over much of the human intervention in the field of robotics.
One area that has a lot of potential is the field of logistics and self-driving vehicles. A company like Wal-Mart, for example, could have an autonomous truck or delivery robot handle the most mundane of deliveries. If this company were able to figure out how to program the robot to perform specific tasks, they might be able to do a whole variety of store deliveries all on their own. Such capabilities, coupled with current autonomous truck and delivery robot technologies, could reduce the costs of doing business and provide an increased level of customer satisfaction. Customers might even choose to have the company send them a robotic assistant instead of a human assistant to do certain tasks.
Robotics is still very much in its infancy, but researchers are coming up with ever more sophisticated ways to manipulate the robots. This has led to the development of more sophisticated programs like Openvised robotics. These projects involve developing a robot and training it to perform a task with the help of a human trainer. For example, the project developed at Cornell University was able to teach a computer algorithm how to count by counting forward and backward. When the robot was trained on this new technique, it was able to beat the best human expert at the same task within a matter of seconds. Similarly, other research projects are working towards developing autonomous operation of heavy equipment automation in manufacturing plants.
One current challenge facing the field of robotics and autonomous navigation is whether or not these systems will be safe for humans and robots alike. Some believe that a fully self-contained autonomous navigation system is too dangerous to allow any meaningful interaction with humans, as it could intervene in a situation where a human is involved. Others believe that although these robots may become more able to safely navigate the roads, they may not be able to avoid hitting people or animals and may inadvertently injure them.