Robot or not

Below are a couple of questions I asked on a non technical forum. I became curious about this at the end of a robotics course I took.

I would be interested to see what replies more technically oriented people come back with.


At what point of sophistication does a machine become classified as a robot?

Is there an understanding or agreement of what a robot is amongst the knowledgeable or the general public?


Its very arbitrary what gets classed as a robot and what doesn't I think.

A washing machine is perhaps as much a robot as a "robot vacuum cleaner", since they both automate
single well defined common household tasks. (The origin of the word is "drudge worker")
You might argue the vacuum cleaner is more "autonomous" as it moves around a changing
environment, but they both serve humans doing boring work.

I think a reasonable line can be drawn where a machine has to handle varying environmental factors
and use AI techniques like navigation or CV to make decisions. The washing machine has no need of
these, whereas the robot vaccum cleaner has to navigate. Perhaps that makes it a robot rather than
a machine.

There is also a confusion in common usage between telepresence/remote control and real robots.
Robot Wars is not really about robots, just remote-controlled dodgems, robot football (RoboCup)
is very much about robots.

Of course robotics covers all the tehnologies needed for autonomous robots, much of which is not
to do with autonomy, but the mechanics and sensors and motors and actuators. Many sophisticated
robots are these days in two places, one is the robot itself, the other is its 'brain' in the cloud, doing
computational heavy-lifting like CV and voice recognition.

MarkT:
Its very arbitrary what gets classed as a robot and what doesn't I think.

I agree with this - it also depends on the moment in history (for instance, in the early 20th century, just about anything electrical was called a "robot" for some reason).

MarkT:
A washing machine is perhaps as much a robot as a "robot vacuum cleaner", since they both automate
single well defined common household tasks. (The origin of the word is "drudge worker")
You might argue the vacuum cleaner is more "autonomous" as it moves around a changing
environment, but they both serve humans doing boring work.

It's more than automation, though. Most current definitions of robots include the ability to somehow sense their environment, and through programmed logic (whether by a human, or self-learned via some AI or machine-learning algorithm), is able to make decisions and cause an effect on that environment (even if the only effect is the change in location of the robot from one point to another - but usually it is something more complex or useful).

So a washing machine could be considered a robot in some sense, depending on its sophistication. A basic washing machine with a timed switching system - not so much. But a washing machine like the one I have at home, most certainly - it uses fuzzy logic to determine the load level and other details about its environment to properly clean the clothes while using a minimum of water (and yes, it wasn't cheap).

The same for a robot vacuum cleaner - I own a Roomba - it goes around and when it senses a wall, it tries to avoid it (or it at least bumps into it and turns around). When it senses dirt (there's a sensor for "heavy dirt" in the brush module) it does a little "spiral move" to "aggressively" clean the spot. When its battery gets low, it seeks out its charger.

In short - what is kinda the current settled upon definition of a robot includes:

  • Is it autonomous?
  • Does it make decisions on its own?
  • Is it programmed in some manner?
  • Can it sense its environment?
  • Can it change its environment based on what it sensed, and its programming?

I'm sure, though, that over time this definition will change as well and be debated, especially as robots become more sophisticated (and especially as they become more "human-like" - but then again, there is already debate and discussion upon the philosophy of the animal as a machine - which includes humans).