Over the years, many movies have been made showing us a glimpse into how life would be when robots take over the world. While the reality may be far from what these movies have shown us, one fact that cannot be ignored is that robots have evolved from fictitious beings in movies to real-life entities in industrial and civil settings in the past five decades. As robots are increasingly integrated into the fabric of our everyday lives, individuals and enterprise teams are becoming increasingly reliant on smart robot technology to accomplish a wide range of physical tasks. In addition to increasing efficiency and productivity in industries,  they improve personnel safety, reduce downtime, and drastically bring down the operation costs.

But what is robotics and why has it become a buzzword in 2021? We shall address this as we go further into this guide.

This blog aims to serve as a quick guide to everything you need to know about robotics in 2021. The article covers:

• What is robotics?
• What are robotic applications?
• What are the different types of robotics?
• Why is robotics technology important in 2021?
• Frequently Asked Questions
• About Universal Robots

What is Robotics?

If you are looking for a simple answer to what is robotics, here’s what NASA has to say –

“Robotics is the study of robots”.

To expand on robotics definition, robotics is an interdisciplinary sector of science and engineering that is dedicated to the design, construction, and use of mechanical robots. It is the science and the study of creating intelligent and efficient robots. If you have been wondering what robotics is, then these robotics definitions should give you a fair idea about what the field is all about.

What are the applications of robotics?

Reports have suggested that of all the robots that are functional today, over 90% are industrial robots. This implies that industries worldwide are prime consumers of robots, while home-based or individual consumption of robots is minuscule.

Here are some of the top robotic applications in the world in 2021:

• Robots in the manufacturing industry are used for performing hazardous or redundant and repetitive tasks that may involve heavy-lifting and movement, such as on assembly lines, welding, painting, fabricating, etc.
  
  
• Robots in the material handling industry are used for lifting, moving, palletizing, sorting, packaging, and other similar operations.
  
  
• Robots in the clinical research industry are used for processing samples, sorting, analyzing, etc., while minimizing hazards posed to personnel and reducing the scope of human error.
  
  
• Robots in the healthcare industry are used for improving the diagnosis and treatment plans, performing surgeries, especially complex ones and remote surgeries, etc.
  
  
• Robots in the emergency response industry: Robots can respond much faster than humans can, and emotions cannot influence them. Hence, they are used by first responders, incident response teams, and law enforcement bodies. They also make for good bomb disposal experts as well as search-and-rescue team members.
  
  
• Robots in the restaurant and food industry: Restaurants with robotic chefs and bartenders are all the rage in 2021.
  
  
• Robots in the agriculture industry are used for milking cattle, picking, sorting, and packaging the produce on the farms, performing a range of agricultural processes on the farms, artificially controlling the parameters necessary for agriculture, data collection and analytics on the farm, working on the livestock, etc.
  
  
• Robots in the construction industry: Experiments have shown that robots can build brick houses about four times faster than human labor, which makes robots quite an efficient workforce in the construction industry. They can help with lifting, transporting, building, analyzing, and so much more.
  
  
• Robots in the military: Drones and unmanned aircraft have long been used by military forces in various countries. The air force and the navy currently deploy robots for various purposes. There are also speculations about futuristic robotic soldiers to help patrol the borders. 
  
  
• Robots in exploration and archeology: Human experts can only reach so many places and helping them explore certain geographical locations can be expensive. This problem is easily solved with robots. They can be programmed to be gentler and more delicate on site than humans and can collect and analyze information rapidly.
  
  
• Robots in the space industry are used to power robot-controlled machines used by astronauts to explore space like the ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) and RMS (Remote Manipulator System), etc.
  
  
• Robots in the home automation and smart home industry: Home automation robots are helping individuals perform redundant home chores such as cleaning, keeping company, monitoring the health of specific people at home, triggering alarms based on pre-programmed instructions, lifting simple objects, performing certain tasks controlled by programmed instructions, etc.
  
  
• Robots in security and surveillance: Human task forces can risk losing their lives or requiring a larger workforce to be deployed to keep up the jobs in shifts and enable them to take breaks. Robots do not have this limitation and can run the required security and surveillance jobs without a hitch.

These are just some of the top robotic applications in the world today and there are countless more. To cover them all is practically impossible, however, it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that robots have entered just about every industry and every discipline in the world in some or the other way.

What are the different types of robotics?

Robots differ from each other on a range of factors – their shape, their size, their design, the functions they can perform, the degree of their autonomy, etc. Such are the advances in robotic technology. Robots can be as small as 0.2 mm (the RoboBee) or 200 meters long (the Vindskip). They can be stationary or mobile; they could require human supervision and intervention or could operate smoothly based on pre-programmed, pre-trained instructions and decision-making abilities.

Robots are generally classified into five major types. These types are –

1. Pre-programmed robots: This type of robot commonly operates in controlled environments and is equipped to perform simple, monotonous tasks. This form of robotic automation would exist as a mechanical arm or an automotive assembly line. A pre-programmed robot would be set up to perform one particular function, and it would continue to perform the function much quicker and more efficiently, and also for longer hours than what human labor would be able to.
   
   
2. Humanoid robots: These kinds of robots are designed to mimic human actions and behavior, so much so that, sometimes, the humanoid robots very closely resemble human beings in reality, complete with human facial expressions and actions. Quite a small number of humanoid robots have been created to date and are being used for various purposes.
   
   
3. Autonomous robots: These robots can function more or less without any direct human supervision. These robots have in-built sensors that can help them make decisions according to their training. Common examples of these robots are home cleaning robots, lawn trimming robots, autonomous drones, medical assistant robots, etc.
   
   
4. Tele-operated robots: Tele-operated robots are generally semi-autonomous and use a wi-fi network to allow human supervision remotely. These robots are beneficial in challenging situations like extreme terrain, weather, etc where remote monitoring becomes essential. Repairing oil pipe leaks is a classic application of teleoperated robots.
   
   
5. Augmenting robots: Augmenting robots are intended to replace or enhance human capabilities. It is a field of human body augmentation and quite close to what we often see in sci-fi movies, but only very real and practical. A lot of the augmented robots serve as prosthetic limbs or exoskeletons.
   
   

Why is robotics technology important in 2021 - 2022 

Robotics technology has seeped into every facet of our lives. Robots are not only raising the standards of products and services being delivered, they are also raising the bar for efficiency and productivity in every industry imaginable. Countless tasks that are immensely hazardous for human labor are now being performed by robots, safeguarding human life and well-being. Robots can perform the same task on repeat without requiring breaks, which is something humans could never do. Robots are making businesses competitive and flexible, desperately needed in the uncertain, challenging times of 2021.

Robotics automation can be integrated into the existing infrastructure of industries. They are improving the precision and accuracy with which tasks are being performed. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging, robots have the potential to ease lives by working alongside people in factories, at home, and where their requirements are deemed necessary. In challenging situations, such as the military, robots are deployed to save human life. While wars are something all nations must consciously work towards to avoid, robots still provide an opportunity to maintain peace without bloodshed. These are just some of the reasons why robotics is important and more relevant in 2021.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using robotics?

The advantages of using robots include:

• Robots increase the productivity of operations in factories. 
  
  
• Robots can perform tasks more efficiently and quickly with minimal to no scope of errors.
  
  
• Robots don’t fall sick, get bored, or need a break.
  
  
• Unlike humans, robots do not require air and water for sustenance. 
  
  
• Robots are better suited to perform tasks that are considered to be hazardous for human life.
  
  
• Robots uplift and improve redundant, tedious, and repetitive tasks.
  
  
• Robots are not usually affected by lockdowns and deadly viral infections.
  
  
• Robots are driven by sensors and actuators which do not have fatigue or growing error margins with time.
  
  
• Robots can be integrated with existing infrastructure to transform operation lines in factories.
  
  
• Robots can be trained on prevalent data to perform accurately in real-life environments, etc.
  
  

The disadvantages of using robots include:

• Robots could pose a threat to human jobs as they can easily replace humans on the job.
  
  
• Robots need skilled personnel who are required to be trained to operate them – with the widening skills gap, these trained individuals are hard to find.
  
  
• Robots lack human insight and the power to make real-time decisions based on experience beyond what has been programmed into them.
  
  
• Robots are extremely expensive and involve huge amounts of capital expenditure for all industries that plan to deploy them.
  
  
• Robots can work for long hours without a decline in performance, however, when something goes wrong with the robot, it calls for unplanned downtime, which is hard to cover up with human labor when the operations lines are not built or planned for human labor.
  
  
• Robots generally tend to have a huge carbon footprint and that impacts the environment negatively.
  
  
• A huge number of robots are powered by machine learning and data science, and in the absence of actual data, it can be hard to train the robots accurately.
  
  
• Robots commonly use IoT sensors, and any connectivity issues or problems with the sensors could hamper operations significantly.
  
  
• In the case of cyberattacks, robots could be highly vulnerable and could have a major impact on operations and the industry.
  
  

What are the five major fields of robotics?

There are five major fields of robotics. If one aspired to build or deploy or even just learn more about robots, these are the five fields they would need to focus on. These five major fields of robotics technology are:

1. The Operator Interface: The human-robot interface that is responsible for facilitating the communication between the human operator and the robot is called the operator interface. Over time, the operator interface has become significantly simplified and became more user-friendly.
   
   
2. The Mobility or Locomotion Functions: Different robots have different mechanisms with which they accomplish the tasks they have been designed for. However, in order to achieve this, they need to move in some or the other way.
   
   
3. Manipulators and Effectors: Robots need to be able to interact with their environments to adapt to changing situations and perform their jobs. Special mechanisms are built into the robots to ensure this function can take place smoothly.
   
   
4. Programming: Programming is the language that an operator and a robot use to communicate. Earlier, all robots were required to be intricately programmed with pages and pages worth of code for every task they were designed to perform. However, it is not the case now, and a lot of robots are powered by advanced programming, using which the robots can learn and grow on their own, powered by learning and adapting to changes in their environments.
   
   
5. Sensing and Perception: Robots are required to sense, perceive their environments and adapt accordingly. Most robots today are powered by IoT sensors that would gather valuable data, which is used to train the robots further and make real-time decisions on the tasks being performed. This sense of perception and recording the environment is essential in robots.
   
   

Where is robotics used?

Robotics is used in countless industries around the world. Some industries that make ample usage of robotics technology include manufacturing, clinical research, healthcare, restaurant and foods, agriculture, construction, military, space, security, etc. 

Artificial intelligence has indeed come a long way from its early days. The new generation of robots that are being deployed in 2021 has superior sensing systems and can master tasks that were earlier considered incredibly difficult. Robots have led to the creation and commissioning of smart factories and even smart cities, where operations have been transformed thanks to Industry 4.0 technologies, such as robotics technology, internet of things(IoT), Artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, etc. robots are becoming smart, intelligent companions to human beings and helping save lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformations across industries. Developments in industries that we were warming up to are becoming an indispensable necessity in industries, and robotics is a prime example. If industries fail to embrace robotics technology today, there is a high chance that they will struggle to compete with the changing world and would become obsolete and irrelevant in the future. Such is the pace at which technology is evolving and if industries do not upgrade constantly, they will have a lot to lose. While the energy efficiency of the new generation robots has improved significantly, there is still a very long way to go to experience conceivable progress.

About Universal Robots

Universal Robots is one of the world’s top developers of industrial collaborative robots, commonly referred to as cobots. The company aspires to change the way people work and live around the world through automation. Universal Robots is dedicated to bringing safe, flexible, easy-to-use industrial robots that would be useful for businesses of all sizes and means, no matter where they are in the world.