This article surveys the evolution of robotics research in the last half century as a response to the evolution of human social needs, from the industrial robotics that released the human operator from danger- ous or risky tasks to the recent explosion of field and service robotics to assist the human. This article sur- veys traditional research topics in industrial robotics and mobile robotics and then expands on new trends in robotics research that focus more on the interaction between human and robot. The new trends in robotics research have been denominated service robotics because of their general goal of getting robots closer to human social needs, and this article surveys research on service robotics such as medical robotics, rehabilitation robotics, underwater robotics, field robotics, construc- tion robotics and humanoid robotics. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the evolution of research topics in robotics from classical motion control for industrial robots to modern intelligent control techniques and social learning paradigms, among other aspects.
Introduction During the last 45 years, robotics research has been aimed at finding solutions to the technical necessities of applied robotics. The evolution of application fields and their sophistication have influenced research topics in the robotics community. This evolution has been dominated by human necessities. In the early 1960s, the industrial revolution put industrial robots in the factory to release the human operator from risky and harmful tasks. The later incorporation of industrial robots into other types of production processes added new requirements that called for more flex- ibility and intelligence in industrial robots. Currently, the creation of new needs and mar- kets outside the traditional manufacturing robotic market (i.e., cleaning, demining, construction, shipbuilding, agriculture) and the aging world we live in is demanding field and service robots to attend to the new market and to human social needs. This article is aimed at surveying the evolution of robotics and tracing out the most representative lines of research that are strongly related to real-world robotics applications. Consequently, many research topics have been omitted for
The Evolution of Robotics Research
From Industrial Robotics to Field and Service Robotics
BY ELENA GARCIA, MARIA ANTONIA JIMENEZ, PABLO GONZALEZ DE SANTOS, AND MANUEL ARMADA
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MARCH 2007 IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 91
one main reason: The authors’ goal of tracking the evolu- tion of research would not have been met by presenting a catalog of every research topic in such a broad area. Therefore these authors apologize to those authors whose research topic has not been reflected in this survey. The intention is not to imply that omitted topics are less rele- vant, but merely that they are less broadly applied in the real robotics world. This article addresses the evolution of robotics research in three different areas: robot manipulators, mobile robots, and biologically inspired robots. Although these three areas share some research topics, they differ significantly in most research topics and in their application fields. For this rea- son, they have been treated separately in this survey. The section on robot manipulators includes research on indus- trial robots, medical robots and rehabilitation robots, and briefly surveys other service applications such as refueling, picking and palletizing. When surveying the research in mobile robots we consider terrestrial and underwater vehi- cles. Aerial vehicles are less widespread and for this reason have not been considered. Biologically inspired robots include mainly walking robots and humanoid robots; how- ever, some other biologically inspired underwater systems are briefly mentioned. In spite of the differences between robot manipulators, mobile robots and biologically inspired robots, the three research areas converge in their current and future intended use: field and service robotics. With the modernization of the First World, new services are being demanded that are shifting how we think of robots from the industrial viewpoint to the social and personal viewpoint. Society demands new robots designed to assist and serve the human being, and this harks back to the first origins of the concept of the robot, as transmit- ted by science fiction since the early 1920s: the robot as a human servant (see Figure 1). Also, the creation of new needs and markets outside the traditional market of man- ufacturing robotics leads to a new concept of robot. A new sector is therefore arising from robotics, a sector with a great future giving service to the human being. Tradi- tional industrial robots and mobile robots are being modi- fied to address this new market. Research has evolved to find solutions to the technical necessities of