The Robots are Here

摘要

Robots have been a fixture of science fiction books and movies for decades. Perhaps our infatuation with them stems from some innate need to reproduce humanity in the form of a machine. Or, perhaps, it comes from a desire to create machines that can take over the mundane tasks of our everyday lives. Whatever the reason, the fact is, the idea of robots has prompted innovators to go out and build the robots that we see today and will continue to see into the future. But robots aren't just a plot device in sci-fi or playthings for the nerds in the "Big Bang Theory" when they aren t in a comic book store. In the business world, robots have been in use in industrial manufacturing since their introduction in 1962 in a GM automotive plant. But, until recently, they haven't gotten much traction beyond the assembly line or one-off use cases. In part, that's because the industrial robots used in manufacturing differ quite significantly from the new generation of robots making their way into a broader range of industries and applications.