Seeing as we just saw a whole ton of different Robots at CES 2017 including Laundroid, Aristotle by Nabi, Emotech Olly, Ewaybot MoRo, Black & Decker Smartech Robot Vac, Ubtech's Lynx robot and many more. SkyLabs team and been talking robot ideas ever since. When most of us hear the word ‘robots', what probably immediately springs to mind are image from hundreds of science fiction movies, from Star Wars to Blade Runner. The fact is, far from being the stuff of futuristic fantasy, robots are all around us today. And their presence is only set to continue expanding.
Of course, the conventional notion is of a synthetic human or android, an artificially-engineered person who will walk around just like the flesh and blood variety. But robots come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, depending on the tasks they have been designed to accomplish.
At their most basic level, robots are already installed in offices throughout the World. Think of the vast plants churning out cars. Practically every part of the production process is now in the hands of robotic components – machines that have been specifically pre-programmed to handle feats of precision engineering. Although the figures are difficult to collate with 100% accuracy, there may be upwards of one million fully functional industrial robots that are an integral part of plants across the globe.
At the lower end of the scale, there are some half a million cleaning robots working in offices in various sectors in many countries. While these won't exactly resemble C3PO with a duster and cloth, they will come in a diverse range of designs. Each of these will be designed to cope with everything from desk areas and rest rooms to robots that will deal with areas containing sensitive equipment, such as telecommunications or server stores.
You only have to consider the boom in sales figures of toy robots in the previous decade. This is one area where robots are predicted to truly explode in functionality and popularity over the next 20 years or so. Entertainment robots will enter more and more households, allowing robotics will make the leap from a mainly service tool - for cleaning or working on factory production lines - and into domestic environments.
The nature of robot design will be greatly influenced, allowing the look of robots to become more streamlined, tending towards the classical image of synthetic humans rather than simple machines. Robotics will begin looking into dealing with practical considerations, such as facial features, color schemes, and dimensions, as well as fluidity of movement, robustness, and how the units are powered. One of our current favs is Asimo from Honda.