An accessible and engaging account of robots, covering the current
state of the field, the fantasies of popular culture, and
implications for life and work. Robots are entering the mainstream.
Technologies have advanced to the point of mass
commercialization-Roomba, for example-and adoption by
governments-most notably, their use of drones. Meanwhile, these
devices are being received by a public whose main sources of
information about robots are the fantasies of popular culture. We
know a lot about C-3PO and Robocop but not much about Atlas,
Motoman, Kiva, or Beam-real-life robots that are reinventing
warfare, the industrial workplace, and collaboration. In this book,
technology analyst John Jordan offers an accessible and engaging
introduction to robots and robotics, covering state-of-the-art
applications, economic implications, and cultural context. Jordan
chronicles the prehistory of robots and the treatment of robots in
science fiction, movies, and television-from the outsized influence
of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (in which
Asimov coined the term "robotics"). He offers a guided tour of
robotics today, describing the components of robots, the
complicating factors that make robotics so challenging, and such
applications as driverless cars, unmanned warfare, and robots on
the assembly line. Roboticists draw on such technical fields as
power management, materials science, and artificial intelligence.
Jordan points out, however, that robotics design decisions also
embody such nontechnical elements as value judgments, professional
aspirations, and ethical assumptions, and raise questions that
involve law, belief, economics, education, public safety, and human
identity. Robots will be neither our slaves nor our overlords;
instead, they are rapidly becoming our close companions, working in
partnership with us-whether in a factory, on a highway, or as a
prosthetic device. Given these profound changes to human work and
life, Jordan argues that robotics is too important to be left
solely to roboticists.
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