Today, over one million household robots, and a further 1.1 million industrial robots, are operating worldwide. Robots are used to perform tasks that require great levels of precision or are simply repetitive and boring. Many also do jobs that are hazardous to people, such as exploring shipwrecks, helping out after disasters, studying other planets and defusing bombs or mines.
Robots are increasingly marching into our lives. In the future, robots will act as carers, medics, bionic enhancements, companions, entertainers, security guards, traffic police and even soldiers.
Domestic invasion
Despite the longevity of the robot concept, robotic butlers that roam our homes and relieve us from housework still seemed far from reality until very recently. Instead, the vast majority of robots worked in factories performing the industrial functions of brainless machines.
However, a combination of increased computing power and advances made in the field of artificial intelligence, or AI, have now made software smart enough to make robots considerably more useful.
A recent report published by the United Nations revealed that sales of domestic robots had tripled in a single year. What's more, they were well on their way to outstripping their industrial cousins.
While a large portion of the household robots were made up of robotic vacuum cleaners, mops, lawn mowers, pool cleaners, security bots and even robotic baby-rockers - the real boom was in entertainment robots.
Suddenly people were happy to pay for robots that had no specific functional value. Instead these bots, such as Sony's Aibo robotic dog and its robo-pups served as robo-pets and companions, rather than slaves.
This is partly because many domestic chores still pose a real challenge for robots, in terms of dexterity and intelligence, even with seemingly simple chores such as ironing.
Movers and shakers
Away from the domestic front, the modern bot can take many other forms. Some are even designed to change their form, such as shape-shifting tetrabots or self-cloning robots.
And while we often think of robots being humanoid, such as Honda's Asimo and Sony's Qrio, there is as much interest, if not more, in emulating other creatures like insects, lobsters, orang-utans, alligators, snakes and fish. A robot guard dragon has even been created.
Whether they have two legs, many legs, or no legs at all, considerable advances have been made in robot locomotion, including bipedal walking, rambling, crawling, rock-climbing, bouncing, slithering and swimming.
There are also wheeled bots that work as autonomous vehicles, such as the desert racers that compete in the DARPA Grand Challenge to be the fastest to cross a desert without any human control.
Robot wars
One area where even more advances in autonomy have been made is the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. These are essentially remotely-controlled spy planes that are capable of flying themselves if they lose contact with their pilot. These planes can also be used to monitor forest fires. Some robots have even learnt to fly of their own accord.
The Pentagon has started arming some UAVs, making them capable of responding with firepower against aggressive attacks - so-called unmanned combat vehicles, or UCVs. Robots that act as battlefield spies have also been designed.
Also aiming to remove humans from dangerous situations are space agencies, such as NASA, who have developed many space exploration robots. For example, the robonaut is a remotely-operated robot, designed to perform dangerous space walks in the place of an astronaut.
In addition, NASA has already sent robotic rovers to Mars, developed robotic dirt scoopers, "flying eyes" and probes for interplanetary exploration and even sent droids off to try to explore asteroids. Space probes such as Huygens (which landed on Titan) and Russia's Venera 9 (which landed on Venus) are sometimes considered robots too.
And it's not just other planets that robots are good for exploring. Robotic submarines, also known as remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, have now become important way of exploring the deep ocean or ice-capped waters, while heat resistant robots are now used to patrol and monitor the activity in volcanoes. A robotic rover has even been used to explore Egyptian pyramids.
Precision surgeons
Operating on the human body requires high skill but also great control, something robots can provide. The idea of robotic surgery prompted early fears of unsupervised robots let loose to operate, but the reality is that robots now assist surgeons to perform precision procedures.
The most successful of these is arguably the da Vinci robotic surgical system, which is used for keyhole surgery, to operate on anything from gall bladder removals and brain surgery to heart bypasses.
Similarly, tiny, wireless and robotic camera-capsules have been used diagnostically, by allowing them to pass through a patient's digestive system. Others have been designed to move about by remote control in the abdominal cavity, beaming images back to the surgeon, or even taking biopsy samples. Robot hands have even been developed to scan for breast cancer.
Such life-saving robots have proved so successful that dentists are considering using robotic dental drill to make implant dental surgery cheaper, quicker and, crucially, less painful.
Actuators and sensors
But despite all the successes, there are still many challenges in robotics. These include producing better actuators (which control how robots move), sensors (which allow them to detect their environment) and ultimately making bots much smarter.
Current motors, and hydraulic or pneumatic actuators, are either too weak, or too bulky and noisy. Artificial muscle might be one solution, but so far these have failed to be strong enough to beat even a teenage girl in a robotic arm wrestling match.
Bipedal and humanoid robots have proved a particular problem. Robots on wheels, or those that move like insects, have found it much easier to balance and get around.
And while much early research in robotics focused on using sonar sensors because they were cheap and easy to use, the focus today is on the more challenging, yet richer, vision-based navigation systems.
Similarly, while there is much research on making robotic arms and hands, the difficulty lies in making electronic skin sensitive enough to detect fragile or slippery objects by touch alone. A robot that mimics human speech is also under development.
To encourage advances in these all these fields, it is now common for the robotic community to use contests. These include baseball catching contests, to improve dexterity; goldfish-catching contests, to improve underwater manoeuvrability; even robotic camel jockeying contests have been held, though they were created to replace child jockeys.
The ultimate test perhaps is robot soccer. This is driving development in just about every area of robotics from the ability to run and kick a ball to communicating and demonstrating teamwork. The grand aim is to have a team of humanoid robots that can beat the best human soccer team in the world by 2050.
Until then the question remains that if robots are ever made smart enough to do our ironing will they also be smart enough to refuse to do it for us? Would we suddenly have a robotic-rebellion on our hands?
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