
What Is a Robot? - Osiris30
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2016/03/what-is-a-human/473166/?single_page=true
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taneq
> “Your washing machine is a robot. Your dishwasher is a robot.

I'd argue that most dishwashers and washing machines are not robots, because
they follow a pre-set sequence rather than responding interactively to their
environment. Some might have a degree of closed loop control (eg. temperature
control, automatic load size selection) but nothing that you would really
count as perceiving their environment.

As for what we will _call_ a robot, the trend seems more the opposite. Twenty
years ago an autonomous car would absolutely have been called a robot, whereas
now we carefully avoid the word when referring to anything but a robot arm.

~~~
mandor
Most of the robots in the manufacturing industry are following a pre-set
sequence. Why do we call them a robot whereas most people would not call a
dishwasher a robot?

I think what we (as a society) call a robot is a machine that has some degree
of versatility: \- an industrial robot can be programmed to achieve a
different task (even if the sequence is pre-set, it is easy to set a different
sequence for a different need), and the same kind of robots can be used to
achieve many different tasks \- a food processor can make many different
recipes \- a Roomba can adapt its behavior to the room (it has some degree of
versatility because it can adapt to the conditions)

... but a dishwasher has a single purpose, which is why we usually do not call
it a robot (even if it has sensors, actuators, some algorithms, etc.). If the
dishwasher was also capable of cooking dishes, it would be more versatile and
we would call this a robot (think of a humanoid torso that could do the dishes
but also cook your eggs).

And the most versatile robots like a fully-featured humanoid is probably what
we all have in mind when talk about robots.

Overall, we could say that we have degrees of versatility and therefore
degrees of 'roboticity'. The lower level is the dishwasher, the highest level
is the humanoid.

~~~
taneq
Good point on the multi-function thing. Specifically the hardware has to be
adaptable - if you can add new, different functionality outside of the
original domain just by changing the software, then that's necessary (but not
sufficient on its own) to be considered 'robotic'.

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mirimir
robot = worker

If Čapek had been an English speaker, he would arguably have called his
androids "workers".

