In Japan, robots became popular comic book characters. Robots became cultural icons and the Japanese government was spurred into funding research into robotics. Among the most iconic characters was the Astro Boy, who is taught human feelings such as love, courage and self-doubt. Culturally, robots in Japan became regarded as helpmates to their human counterparts. [68] Mark E. Rosheim summarizes the advances in robotics made by Muslim engineers, especially al-Jazari, as follows:

Saudi Arabia bestows citizenship on a robot named Sophia". TechCrunch. 26 October 2017 . Retrieved 27 October 2016. By the very end of the decade, robotics had started to make advancements on the nanotechnology scale. In 2019, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania created millions of nanobots in just a few weeks using technology borrowed from the mature semiconductor industry. These microscopic robots, small enough to be injected into the human body and controlled wirelessly, could one day deliver medications and perform surgeries, revolutionizing medicine and health. [130] See also [ edit ]

The future of robotics

Snider, Mike. "Boston Dynamics' latest robot video shows its 5-foot humanoid robot has moves like Simone Biles". USA TODAY . Retrieved 4 October 2022. See also: Glossary of robotics A scene from Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), showing three robots The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, [4] was coined by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov created the " Three Laws of Robotics" which are a recurring theme in his books. These have since been used by many others to define laws used in fiction. (The three laws are pure fiction, and no technology yet created has the ability to understand or follow them, and in fact most robots serve military purposes, which run quite contrary to the first law and often the third law. "People think about Asimov's laws, but they were set up to point out how a simple ethical system doesn't work. If you read the short stories, every single one is about a failure, and they are totally impractical," said Dr. Joanna Bryson of the University of Bath. [85])

Takeo Kanade Collection: Envisioning Robotics: Direct Drive Robotic Arms" . Retrieved 31 August 2007. There are many jobs that humans would rather leave to robots. The job may be boring, such as domestic cleaning or sports field line marking, or dangerous, such as exploring inside a volcano. [150] Other jobs are physically inaccessible, such as exploring another planet, [151] cleaning the inside of a long pipe, or performing laparoscopic surgery. [152] Space probesFears and concerns about robots have been repeatedly expressed in a wide range of books and films. A common theme is the development of a master race of conscious and highly intelligent robots, motivated to take over or destroy the human race. Frankenstein (1818), often called the first science fiction novel, has become synonymous with the theme of a robot or android advancing beyond its creator. Over the last three decades, automobile factories have become dominated by robots. A typical factory contains hundreds of industrial robots working on fully automated production lines, with one robot for every ten human workers. On an automated production line, a vehicle chassis on a conveyor is welded, glued, painted and finally assembled at a sequence of robot stations. a b c Rosheim, Mark E. (1994). Robot evolution: the development of anthrobotics. Wiley-IEEE. ISBN 0-471-02622-0. Ronnie Littlejohn; Jeffrey Dippmann (2011). Riding the Wind with Liezi: New Perspectives on the Daoist Classic. SUNY Press. pp.194–195. ISBN 978-1-4384-3455-1.