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When roboticists first attempted to mimic human and animal gaits, they discovered that it was incredibly difficult; requiring more computational power than what was available at the time. So, emphasis was shifted to other areas of research. Simple wheeled robots were used to conduct experiments in behavior, navigation, and path planning . These navigation techniques have now developed into commercially available autonomous robot control systems; the most sophisticated examples of autonomous navigation control systems now available include the commercial/industrial ARCS laser-based navigation system from ActivMedia/MobileRobots and the home/consumer-oriented VSLAM-based NorthStar system.
When engineers were ready to attempt walking robots again, they started small with hexapods and other multi-legged platforms. These robots mimicked insects and arthropods in both form and function. The trend towards these body types offer immense flexibility and proven adaptability to any environment. With more than four legs, these robots are statically stable which makes them easier to work with. Even though significant progress towards bipedal locomotion in robots has been made only recently, in just 4 years after the introduction of Asimo bipedal robots such as KHR-1 that cost only $1300 became available.
Another technical problem preventing wider adoption of robots is the complexity of handling physical objects in the inherently chaotic natural environment. Tactile sensors and better vision algorithms may solve this problem. Librarian robot from University Jaume I in Spain is a good example of current progress in this field.
Recently, tremendous progress has been made in medical robotics, with two companies in particular, Computer Motion and Intuitive Surgical, receiving regulatory approval in North America, Europe and Asia for their robots to be used in minimal invasive surgical procedures. Laboratory automation is also a growing area. Here, benchtop robots are used to transport biological or chemical samples between instruments such as incubators, liquid handlers and readers. Other places where robots are likely to replace human labour are in deep-sea exploration and space exploration. For these tasks, arthropod body types are generally preferred. Mark W. Tilden formerly of Los Alamos National Laboratories specializes in cheap robots with bent but unjointed legs, while others seek to replicate the full jointed motion of crabs' legs.
Experimental winged robots and other examples exploiting biomimicry are also in early development. So-called " nanomotor s" and " smart wires" are expected to drastically simplify motive power, while in-flight stabilization seems likely to be improved by extremely small gyroscopes. A significant driver of this work is military research into spy technologies.
Robotics will probably continue its spread in offices and homes, replacing "dumb" appliances with smart robotic equivalents. Domestic robots capable of performing many household tasks, described in science fiction stories and coveted by the public in the 1960s, are likely to be eventually perfected.
There is likely to be some degree of convergence between humans and robots. Many humans are already cyborgs with some body parts and even parts of the nervous system replaced by artificial analogues. In many cases the same technology might be used both in robotics and in medicine.
Their Robotics Competition is a multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. In 2003 the competition will reach more than 20,000 students on over 800 teams in 24 competitions. Teams come from Canada, Brazil, the U.K., and almost every U.S. state. Unlike the Robot sumo wrestling competitions that take place regularly in some venues, or the Battlebots competitions on TV, these competitions include the creation of the robot.
RoboCup is a competitive organization dedicated to developing a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team by the year 2050. There are many different leagues from simulation, to full-size humanoid.The DARPA Grand Challenge was a competition for robotic vehicles to complete an under-300 mile, off-road course in the Mojave Desert.
The two AAAI Grand Challenges focus on Human Robot Interaction , with one being a robot attending and delivering a conference talk, the other being operator-interaction challenges in rescue robotics.
The Centennial Challenges are NASA prize contests for non-government funded technological achievements, including robotics, by US citizens.
The popularity of the TV shows Robot Wars and Battlebots, of college level robot-sumo wrestling competitions, the success of " smart bombs" and UCAVs in armed conflicts, grass-eating " gastrobots" in Florida, and the creation of a slug-eating robot in England, suggest that the fear of an artificial life form doing harm, or competing with natural wild life, is not an illusion. The worldwide Green Parties in 2002 were asking for public input on extending their existing policies against such competition, as part of more general biosafety and biosecurity concerns. It appears that, like Aldous Huxley's concerns about human cloning, questions Karel Capek raised eighty years earlier in science fiction have become real debates.
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