Very simply, we can say that robotics is an interdisciplinary field of science and engineering dedicated to the design, construction and use of mechanical robots. As defined by Encyclopaedia Britannica, robots are widely used in such industries as automobile manufacture to perform simple repetitive tasks, and in industries where work must be performed in environments hazardous to humans. Besides the technical disciplines of robotics, ethics is important, as some of the work in the field raises ethical questions, as we see, for example, stated in Asimov’s three laws of robotics. Meanwhile, there continues to be some confusion about the terms artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, as they are two separate fields of technology and engineering. Nonetheless, they are often combined, such that artificial intelligence and machine learning are also involved in robotics. In recent years there has been overlap between these fields, causing some confusion as to what can be described as a physical robot and a software robot. To prevent confusion, the word “bot” is used to describe software robots that have no mechanical body. In journalism, bots are used most often, and since they don’t have a physical body, they are software robots, backed with Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
