THIS is a robot.

There’s a lot of stuff thrown around about what robots are and what they do. The rules are really simple and easy to understand.

In 1920, Karel Capec wrote a play called “Rossums Universal Robots“. Karel was the gentleman who coined the term “Robot”, which is a Czech word “Robota” that can be roughly translated as “Forced labor”.
The robots in RUR are synthetic humanoids.

Five years later the play was still travelling around the world when Joseph Engelburger was born. At the ripe old age of 31, Joe invented the first industrial robot, the Unimate. Here’s a film of one in action.

The unimates were crude but they were perfectly representative of the commonest type of robot in existence, the industrial robot.

Industrial robots are programmed to do a certain task or group of tasks. You can program them to have the ability to autonomously make decisions, but that must be part of their programming. Programming robots is getting easier and easier, though there are still some deep level langauges that can be used. FANUC robots, for instance, can still be programmed in KAREL, which is a langauge like Pascal, with the addition of some special code specifically related to motion. It’s called KAREL as an homage to Karel Capek.

But you don’t have to learn Pascal to program, I can teach anyone who isn’t a functional illiterate. On the other hand, if you do understand geometry, and how a robot works, you can do amazing things. But the robot will only do the things you tell it to, it will only make the decisions you allow it to make, and it can only be autonomous within guidelines you have set.

Anyway, that’s the modern version of the word, and here are the confusing bits:

In the 60’s heinlein coined the term “Waldo” to refer to remote manipulators. This can be as simple as a Ronco Grabber to grab cans off shelves, or as complex as one of the “Battle bots” common on the Cable show “Robot wars” and therein lies some of the confusion. Those “Robots” were basically waldos. They were remotely controlled by the contestants and were not autonomous in any way. Any device which requires a human operator to be present at all times falls under this category. There are things like submarine camers and manipulators called ROV’s or Remotely Operated Devices, also the same thing.

The next type of thing commonly called a robot is an AGV, an Automatically Guided Vehicle. Factories used to be full of them, but they really only have a very few specific niches, and while they seem to be operating autonomically are actually following a precise program, either relayed to them via radio frequency, or transmitted through a tape in a floor, or following a GPS signal. Combinations of these types of equipment are also making an appearance, there are planters and harvesters that can receive satelite data but also still need human operators.

The ‘Robots” that will replace burger flippers is not a robot at all, but a very specific type of machine, and it will work extremely well, and be extremely efficient. A robot can be programmed to do an almost infinite variety of jobs, but the burger machine will be a one trick pony.

Most importantly the type of mechanism commonly called a robot, that excites the most interest, are seemingly autonomous things like the mars lander. Again, this is subject to it’s programming, and can only act autonomously within the parameters of it’s programming.

All of this equipment is potentially lethal to humans, and cannot be in the same vicinity as humans. The ‘Three laws” of robotics are pure fantasy, and always will be.

Anthropomorphic ‘Robots” like Aibo or Asimo, are relegated to the category of curiosity, and likely will be for a very long time.

So: Industrial robots are basically articulated arms programmable to do tasks. Waldoes require human operators. AGV’s can be programmed, and exploratory rovers MUST be programmed. But they will all do only the things we tell them to do, and if we tell them to do stupid things, they will do them.

These are all fairly general statements, of course, the details would probably half fill the damned internet- but you get the point.