LIONS, AND TIGERS, AND ROBOTS, OH MY!: HOW SMART ROBOTS INFLUENCE OUR LIVES

Figure 1. Robot at the British Library Science Fiction Exhibition

Robots became a ubiquitous part of everyday life. Robots are designed in different sizes, purposes, price ranges, and their goal is to decrease labor time and improve human efficiency. There are robots designed for industrial purposes, and one of the primary purposes of using these robots is automation. There is also an emerging field that focuses on developing service robots. Some of these robots are intended to assist people or interact with them, such as social robots who can communicate with clients, children, or the elderly. With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), namely Machine Learning Algorithms, including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Face and Object Detection, there is a fledgling interest in service robots. Some of the obvious reasons are ease of data collection and storage through cloud computing as part of big data phenomena, access to processing power, compatibility of graphics cards for matrix calculations, and in turn, rapid advancements in Deep Learning and Neural Networks, which all added to the affordability and performance of robots (Horstmann & Kramer., 2020; Service Robots, 2020).

References

Horstmann, A. C., & Krämer, N.,C. (2020). Expectations vs. actual behavior of a social robot: An experimental investigation of the effects of a social robot's interaction skill level and its expected future role on people's evaluations. PLoS One, 15(8)http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238133

Service Robots (2020, 09). What are Professional Service Robots. Retrieved September 07, 2020 from https://www.robotics.org/service-robots/what-are-professional-service-robots

Acknowledgments:

"Robot at the British Library Science Fiction Exhibition" by BadgerGravling is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0