Robots are Here

This chapter provides an overview of robots. Since the turn of the millennium, new robotic breeds have started to appear at an accelerating pace. It is these mobile, intelligent robots that are now sparking great interest. Robots are not completely ubiquitous yet or particularly smart or threatening, but, just like computers, the internet, and networked mobile devices before them, there appears to be such momentum behind the development of robot technology that its spread is inevitable. All over the world, government and corporate R&D funds are being poured into artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Thus, it is important to have some kind of understanding of the state-of-the-art of these machines and to think about how they should be used and regulated now and in the future. Mobile, physical, autonomous devices that share our domestic and working lives could potentially have a much bigger impact on the world than their predecessor technologies. In the future, they could be seen as the crowning glory of twenty-first-century applied science and engineering, or as tools of social inequality and economic oppression.