Applications of Robotics
Robots can be grouped depending on where they are used. This way of grouping robots gives us an understanding of the may ways that robots are used today.
Agricultural Robots
Crops can be harvested by unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). Unmanned harvesting tractors can be operated around the clock making it possible to handle short windows for harvesting. UGVs are also used for spraying and thinning. They can also be used to monitor the health of crops and livestock. Robots are also used to monitor crops and remove weeds in industrial farming settings where a robotic arm is mounted over a relatvely small area and computer vision is employed to detect weeds and monitor crops for drought and disease.
Assistive Technologies
Robotics is applied in the field of assistive technologies to help disabled people perform day to day tasks. This could be in the form of a motorised wheel chair or a bionic limb. These can be thought to be tele-operated and wearable as they are controlled by and attached to the user.
Domestic Robots
Domestic robots are autonomous service robots used to perform household chores. In the 1950s people thought that housework would be mechanised and automated through general purpose domestic robots. This has not happed. Instead common household chares are performed by dishwashers and washer driers these are microprocessor controlled embedded systems but they fall short of being defined as robots. The recent advent of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners can however be considerred as robots and in the future we may see other chores like ironing be taken on by robots.
Educational Robots
Robotics has been widely adopted in schools and by parents to help children learn. This can be to help children learn to program with tools like Lego Mindstorms or as cause and effect toys used for early years development.
Industrial Robots
Industrial robots are most commonly used in automated assembly lines. This is known as computer aided manufacture (CAM). Industrial robots are also used for painting, disassembly, palletising and picking & placing.
Medical Robotics
Medical robotics studies the way that robots can be used to perform routine surgeries for example removing a patients appendix. These robot are currently teleoperated and used when a surgeon cannot be physically present due to living too far away. In the future medical robots could perform tasks autonomously.
Mining Robots
Mining robots are used in the extraction and transportation of minerals from the ground. They can be in the form of teleoperated drills or unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). They are used because it is often dangerous for humans to be in unstable mines.
Military Robots
The military are making more use of robots in conflict as it overcome the political instability caused by the death of service personal in democratic countries. These come in the form of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, and armed robotic vehicles (URVs).
Space Probes
Robots are used widely in space exporation as they are more resilient to inhospitable environments than astronaughts. The most famous robotic space probe is the mars rover.
