Robot

Robot. It is a word that seems very modern. A word that creates a strong mental picture. A picture of something that looks and acts like a human. Robots are not human, of course. They are machines. The word robot, and robots themselves, are less than 100 years old. But humans have been dreaming of real and imaginary copies of themselves for thousands of years. Early people made little human statues out of clay. And they cut wood and stone to look like humans.What is the future of robots? The goal of scientists is to create a true humanlike robot. Some experts have described this robot of the future as one that can act independently with the physical world through its own senses and actions. Humans have the ability to see, hear, speak and solve problems. Engineers have built robots that have one or two of these abilities. But it takes a number of big expensive computers to make the robots work.The biggest problem in creating a humanlike robot is copying human intelligence. The way the human mind works is almost impossible to copy. A simple computer can mathematical problems far beyond the ability of even the smartest human mind. But the human mind is better than a thousand supercomputers at speaking, hearing and problem solving. Several American and Japanese to develop the senses of sight and touch for robots. The development of these senses will make robots much more useful. However, the most important human ability—the most difficult to copy—is problem solving. An intelligent robot must be able to change the way it acts when it faces an unexpected situation. Humans do it all the time. Computers must do it for robots. This means computers must have a huge base of information about many things. They must be able to find quickly the needed information in their systems. And they must make choices about how to act. So far, this is beyond the ability of computers.