ROBOTICS IN PRACTICE (Part 1)

ROBOTICS IN PRACTICE

Management and applications of industrial robots

Robotics in Practice

Management and applications of industrial robots

Back in nineteen thirty-nine, when I was still a teenager, I began to write (and publish) a series of stories about robots which, for the first time in science fiction, were pictured as having been deliberately engineered to do their job safely. They were not intended to be creaky Gothic menaces, nor outlets for mawkish sentiment. They were simply well-designed machines.

Beginning in nineteen forty-two, I crystallized this notion in what I called 'The Three Laws of Robotics' and, in nineteen fifty, nine of my robot stories were collected into a book, I, Robot.

I did not at that time seriously believe that I would live to see robots in action and robotics becoming a booming industry. ... Yet here we are, better yet, I am alive to see it.

But then, why shouldn't they be with us? Robots fulfil an important role in industry. They do simple and repetitive jobs more steadily, more reliably, and more uncomplainingly than a human being could - or should.

Does a robot displace a human being? Certainly, but he does so at a job that, simply because a robot can do it, is beneath the dignity of a human being; a job that is no more than mindless drudgery. Better and more human jobs can be found for human beings - and should.

Of course, the robots that now exist and that are described in fascinating detail in this book that you are holding, are not yet as complex, versatile and intelligent as the imaginary robots of I, Robot, but give the engineers time!

There will be steady advances in robotics, and, as in my teenage imagination, robots will shoulder more and more of the drudgery of the world's work, so that human beings can have more and more time to take care of its creative and joyous aspects.