Even roboticists still debate exactly what a robot is. Is it a computer that moves, or a machine that can operate autonomously in reaction to its environment? What can be said for sure is that robotics is a set of technologies, often used for automation, and that humanoid robots are just one of many forms robots take.
Take a look at some of the machines on display at the RoboBusiness conference, which was in Boston last week, and the New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation (NERVE) center at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, to get a sense of where commercial robots are going.
Author: Martin LaMonica
Martin is a veteran journalist covering science, technology, and business from Cambridge, MA. He writes about energy and technology for Xconomy, MIT Technology Review, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, and others. For ten years, he was senior editor at CNET where he covered clean tech, the Web, and tech companies. During the dotcom boom and bust, he was executive editor at enterprise IT publication InfoWorld and previously was the Paris correspondent for the IDG News Service. He graduated from Cornell University.
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