What’s Robotics? | A Beginners’ Guide

7 min readMar 17, 2021

Who does not know them? From Lt. Commander Data (Star Trek) to WALL-E to the Terminator … Hollywood and pop culture have significantly influenced our image of robots over the last decades. The reality is more unspectacular, but no less fascinating. In this robotics guide to robotics, we take a look at the state of development in 2020, who is driving it forward and which trends are currently being followed.

“If you’ve created a conscious machine that’s not the history of man … that’s the history of gods” — Ex Machina

People have always tried to create machines similar to them. Already in ancient times the myth of Hephaestus, the god of fire and forge, was created. His legendary craftsmanship made him the creator of Talos, one of the first robots in history. This metal protector of Crete fulfilled all criteria of modern robots:

Talos was an intelligent, physical machine.
Talos could carry out tasks independently.
Talos was also able to perceive his environment and change it.

Since then, humans have created different types of robots. Industrial robots such as Ultimate, which have been used in factories & warehouses for over 60 years, invisible to the public, become more and more integrated into our daily lives. Remote-controlled robots, which — supported by humans — provide precise and fast services in medicine and research. Up to autonomous robots, which, for example in the form of our vacuum cleaner robots, are gradually proving their practical use for millions of people. Humanoid robots, which of all forms are most similar to our idea of the Hollywood robot, have not yet become part of our everyday life.

This is due to the fact that robots have so far mostly been described as shells, with a few programmed abilities. Their abilities are (still) limited to special applications. Thanks to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, this could soon change. Not only are machines becoming more intelligent. Thanks to Deep Learning and Co, they are also consistently developing themselves and using our practically unregulated data streams to surprise us again and again. Technical limitations imposed by hardware are being reduced more and more with our increasing digitalization.

Summary: Robotics of the future

The holy grail of robotics are robots that possess an ego-consciousness. However, this raises complex existential questions to which we as a species will (have to) find answers sooner or later.
Today’s robots are far from the image that pop culture and Hollywood draw of them. Thanks to their common sense, every four-year-old child today knows more than the most advanced computer.
Thanks to artificial intelligence (especially machine and deep learning), robots are becoming smarter and, perhaps more importantly, learning without human intervention.
Industrial robots, the most widespread robots, are largely invisible to the public. However, tech companies like JD.com or Amazon are already using them extensively, for example to completely automate their warehouses and send packages with little or no human assistance.

Why the future of humanity depends on robots.

Mankind will use robots in the future. There is no way around it. In fact, machines have already taken over our world. They regulate the financial markets, fly airplanes and help sort out spam e-mails. But there is still a long way to go before robots are also integrated into our everyday lives in a physical presence.

But what is the reason for their use and why will the human future not be without robots? There are many reasons, but I would like to provide three interesting food for thought:

Productivity: robots increase productivity because they can work 24/7. Not only are they faster, but they also make fewer mistakes because they are more precise. They also don’t care if their work is monotonous, if they have to carry heavy loads, or if they have to do inconvenient jobs. In science, robots can evolve thanks to artificial intelligence and help humans fix their biggest problems — whether it’s diseases or space exploration.
They’re not human: robots are more reliable. They’re punctual, they don’t forget to-dos — they’re programmed to do their tasks and carry them out. Machines don’t complain. Robots are not sick and know no danger to life. Therefore, they can be used in dangerous places.
Meaning of life: Many of the jobs that robots will take over always have the same work processes. By eliminating hard or boring jobs, people are given freedom for self-development. Humankind has the opportunity to create an era of prosperity — for example, through models such as basic income.
A good overview of the advantages and disadvantages of robots can be read here.

Robots will be elementary for our interplanetary future

In this blog we take a look into the future together and hardly anyone does this better than the world-renowned physicist Michio Kaku. At this point, I would like to take up his ideas on the future of humanity, which he already recorded in 2018 in his brilliant book “Farewell to Earth: The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond”.

Michio Kaku sees robotics as a central building block for human survival on other planets.

“The first steps lead to Mars. […] Exploiting these celestial bodies geologically could fund the next steps: Terraforming with technological tools such as quantum computers, super-hard nano-materials, and self-replicating mining and working robots. […] From a reshaped Mars, development then moves on to a city in space and travel to other star systems.”

Michio Kaku, in his book, “Farewell to Earth: The Future of Humanity.”
However, our current robots will not be sufficient to realize this vision of the future. The key to space exploration will be self-learning robots. As the machines are confronted with ever new dangers, they will have to make decisions on their own and learn from them.

They must meet the three key robot criteria:

Intelligence
perception and
autonomy.

This new generation of robots faces two key challenges:

Robots will have to self-replicate.
Robots will develop their own consciousness.

Challenge #1: Self-replication — When machines create machines.

Back in 1980, NASA produced a study called Advanced Automation for Space Missions. In it, the U.S. space agency concluded that self-replicating robots were critical to building lunar settlements. It also identified at least three types of robots that would be needed:

Mining robots to extract the (space) raw materials
Construction robots to smelt and refine the raw materials, and finally
Repair robots, to maintain and repair themselves and their colleagues.

These three types of robots would “mine mineral resources, build new factories, and produce copies of themselves in unlimited numbers as cheaply as they do efficiently. They could build a vast agricultural industry and carry modern civilization not only to Mars but everywhere in space, mining raw materials in the asteroid belt, building laser batteries on the moon, assembling huge spacecraft in orbit, and laying the foundations for colonies on distant exoplanets. It would be a groundbreaking achievement to successfully design and deploy self-replicating machines.” [Michio Kaku, “Farewell to Earth: The Future of Humanity”]

Challenge #2: Singularity & Robots with Ego-Consciousness.

Scientists and techies like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are constantly clashing over the question of when the time will come for machines to surpass humanity (reach the so-called Singularity) and whether this will plunge humanity into an existential crisis.

Without opening the topic too wide, here are a few thoughts:

When will the point come when AI and robots become dangerous to humans? Michio Kaku sees the critical point when machines develop an ego consciousness. Pursuing their own goals inevitably leads to a collision with those of humans. “It’s like asking a child to control its parents …” (Geoffrey Hinton).
Science fiction books such as the tetralogy “Singularity” (author: William Hertling) describe models, such as “peer group reputation”, where codes of behavior for AIs and humans are monitored and maintained by both. The exponentially growing performance of AIs is governed by reputation within the group. Only trustworthy AIs can evolve. However, it is currently impossible to predict whether such models could be implemented in reality.

Back to the present

Robots are already performing important tasks today. From fighting wildfires, to keeping company for the elderly, to assisting our doctors in critical surgeries. Their rapid development means they will become even more integrated in the near future.

For more information on the different types of robots and their use in our time, check out the articles below.

Cool Stuff

Each year, the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards honor the world’s most innovative and leading robotics companies: https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/rbr50/rbr50-robotics-innovation-awards-digital-edition/

Imagine you have a question for your insurance company or you’re in your favorite online store, but you’re unsure whether the new jacket will really look that good on you. Thanks to artificial intelligence, virtual humanoids will enrich our lives in the future. These avatars are created by the New Zealand company Soul Machines, among others. Their lifelike avatars interact with people — for example, the musician Will.i.am in the YouTube Originals series “Age of AI.

That Walt Disney was a genius as well as a visionary is probably undeniable. But did you know that Disney also makes robots! More precisely, “Stuntronics”, whose name perfectly describes its function as stunt robots and true aerialists.

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