Approach of Automation Manufacturing and Optimization in a Robotic Industry

Abstract

This article surveys the evolution of robotics research in the last half century as a response to the evolution of human social needs, from the industrial robotics that released the human operator from dangerous or risky tasks to the recent explosion of field- and service-robotics to assist the human. This article surveys traditional research topics in industrial robotics and mobile robotics and then expands on new trends in robotics research that focus more on the interaction between human and robot. The new trends in robotics research have been denominated service robotics because of their general goal of getting robots closer to human social needs, and this article surveys research on service robotics such as medical robotics, rehabilitation robotics, underwater robotics, field robotics, construction robotics and humanoid robotics. The aim of this overview of the evolution of research topics in robotics from classical motion control for industrial robots to modern intelligent control techniques and social learning paradigms. Society demands new robots designed to assist and serve the human being, and this harks back to the first origins of the concept of the robot, as transmitted by science fiction since the early 1920s: the robot as a human servant. Also, the creation of new needs and markets outside the traditional market of manufacturing robotics leads to a new concept of robot.