Introduction: What is a Robot

So what can be considered a real robot? Clearly it can't be a mechanism that simple repeats a task over and over again without knowing what it is doing. If that was what a robot is then a can opener is robot.

A robot must have some kind of intelligence. Intelligence is very broad and controversial term so I'll reduce that a little.

It is generally accepted that a machine is a robot when it is able to sense its environment, make a decision based on what it senses, and then take physical action within the environment. Basically, monkey see, monkey like, monkey do.

But this is really very broad and non specific. That definition creates all kinds of gray areas. A human does the same thing but then so does your thermostat. A thermostat senses the temperature, decides if it is too cold, and then turns on a fan to warm it up. Is the thermostat a robot?

In our modern world of "smart" devices robotics is literally everywhere already. Yes, your thermostat is a robot. A simple robot, but a robot none the less. The thermostat is in fact smarter than the Unimate. And when I say "thermostat" I don't mean something like the Nest, I mean the old mercury switch thermostat you had in grade school.

So how could a device that is literally a switch be smarter than a hydraulic behemoth with a computer on board. The difference is this. The thermostat can react to changing conditions Unimate could not.

Unimate had on-board encoders and sensors that told the robot were it's arm was. But it had no idea where the world was. It did not know if a car was in front of it to weld on, or if it just punched a guy. Like the historical automatons it would just keep writing whether there was paper or not.

The thermostat does have a connection with the environment and can change its actions based on those changing conditions. A dumb thermostat, which would not be a robot, would be one on a timer. A thermostat that would turn on the AC even though it is 45 degrees in the house because the timer went off.

Now hopefully it is clear what really makes a robot or even an AI. It is based on the machine's adaptability to its environment. It has to first be able to sense the world around it and then make a decision, and act on it.