Robot, Service Robotics and Cloud Robotics

A robot is a mechanical device that can carry out physical tasks. A robot can be operated under the direct control of humans or autonomously controlled by a computerized system. According to the IFR (International Federation of Robotics), a service robot is one that operates partly or fully autonomously to carry out services that are useful to humans and equipment, excluding industrial production operations (in this case, industrial robotics is involved).

Fuente: http://www.supplychaindigital.com/technology/automation-and-robotics-supply-chain-future

Service robotics is the sector of robotics that aims to develop robots that can assist humans in their environment. These two basic concepts are very important: “assist” but not “replace” and “in their environment”, which requires highly complex interaction, computation and adaptation to the dynamic conditions of the places where we live. We can distinguish two macro areas: personal or domestic service robotics, which can be applied to the home or leisure time, and professional service robotics, used for applications of interest to companies in production areas or offices.

Fuente: http://www.irobot.mx/robots-dom%C3%A9sticos/Aspiraci%C3%B3n

If robots are connected to the Web, they can access a virtually infinite store of knowledge, with a simple “thought”. A robot can recognize an object it has never seen by comparing an image with a database. It can have access to recognition services and speech synthesizers in all languages. For example, new applications could be downloaded from the Web for robots in order to transform a vacuum cleaner into an automated tray for carrying bottles and glasses to the living room, turn a telepresence robot into an assistant for healthcare staff who distribute medicines to patients, or make an entertainment robot give a warning when it detects that a person has fallen in the home.

Fuente: http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/cloud-robotics/

The term “Cloud Robotics” was coined for the first time as “a new approach to robotics that takes advantage of the Internet as a resource for massively parallel computation and sharing of vast data resources”. Today, this new and booming sector allows to lighten the robot to perform complex functionalities on local processors, thus reducing the impact on battery consumption, on the need for ongoing upgrades to the on-board system and on the costs of the hardware equipment required. Therefore, robots are no longer considered an isolated system but are connected to the Web in order to identify new functionalities that can be used to solve the tasks gradually assigned to them. They communicate with the environment that they become part of and collaborate with other robots to exchange resources and information.

It is for this reason that the robot generates great interest in today's society, in particular, how the integration between robots, the network and the cloud can lead to useful services and that generate great benefits to human beings in all areas.