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While the prolific author Isaac Asimov is perhaps most well-known for his Foundation series, he penned many a robot story during his career as well, with his canon consisting of dozens of short stories and at least four novels, depending on how one chooses to categorize them.
Perhaps the most famous of the robot characters in his stories was R. Daniel Olivaw, with the R a prefix for Robot. Why the necessity for the prefix? Well, later in the evolution of robots in the robot series, scientists had progressed to developing ‘humaniform’ robots, more commonly known as androids in popular sci-fi. That is, a robot with a synthetic (possibly even with biological elements) ‘skin’ over the frame of a machine in bipedal form. R. Daniel in several novels assisted Earthman Elijah Baley in solving a number of crimes, including the murder of one of his own creators!
Well, while that day is a long way off, there is no doubt that robots are increasingly pervading more aspects of life. Take Pepper for example, developed by Softbank Group company, Aldebaran.
Here is how Aldebaran introduces the humanoid robot:
“ Pepper is the first humanoid robot designed to live with humans. At the risk of disappointing you, he doesn’t clean, doesn’t cook and doesn’t have super powers… Pepper is a social robot able to converse with you, recognize and react to your emotions, move and live autonomously.
Engaging and friendly, Pepper is much more than a robot, he’s a companion able to communicate with you through the most intuitive interface we know: voice, touch and emotions.”
Pepper began going on sale to the general public in Japan earlier this year, with the first batch (1,000) selling out in less than a minute online. The asking price was around US$1,600 with ongoing costs to the tune of about US$200. Demand has continued to be strong, with each batch selling out as soon as they are made available.
Pepper and the like are fascinating, but are still very much a tiny niche however, while automation in the form of robotics is already well and truly on the scene in several areas. Automotive factories for example are one of the most advanced with their adoption of robots (not like the cute Pepper though!), but there is still much scope for growth. Factories of other types are not far behind and more are arriving in the medical field and agriculture for example even if they might not really seem to be ‘robots’ in the sense of popular fiction.
Overall though, automation/robotics still has a huge runway for growth as improving technology widens the availability of practical automation.
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