The book I read to research this post was Robotics A Very Short Introduction by Alan Winfield which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. The term robot was coined by a Czech author in a science fiction novel. Probably the science fiction author most associated with robots is Isaac Asimov who wrote I Robot among other books. The idea in that robots will be like people’s helpers is likely to start to become a reality by about 2020. By 2025 most families will have at least 1 robot do something like housework or gardening. As there was a revolution with computers a similar thing will happen with robots. Industry has already embraced the idea of robots. Everyone knows that robots help build cars but what about repairing work where natural gas is being drilled. Often it would be impossible for a human to get to it and what about milking cattle, it’s a form of robot that does this. There is development in building predator robots that can digest house flies or slugs which can incorporate energy cells. These robots could use a very low current and be slow moving or release a fragrance to attract pests to a compartment where they can be digested. In the case of slugs they are notoriously difficult to detect but do reflect red light. For example they are cold blooded and could easily be confused with leaves and dirt. There is also an idea of having several robots of simple design that group together to do a task and if several malfunction the ones working can take over for them. There is even the idea of varying the specifications and even having living robots much like genetically enhanced farm animals and crops we have today. You can see this book covers a whole plethora of different types of robots. This book isn’t all that long but is a good read.
