Automated and Emerging Technologies · 4 question types
Past paper frequency (2018 to 2024)
This topic accounts for approximately 3% of your exam marks.
Advantages/disadvantages of using robots in industry are the typical question format.
A robot is a programmable mechanical machine that senses its environment, processes that information and performs physical actions to carry out a task.
Robotics is the branch of engineering and computer science that designs, builds and programs robots. A robot is really a particular kind of automated system (topic 15): it has the same sensor-microprocessor-actuator pipeline, but with an added physical body that can move or manipulate things in the real world.
The syllabus distinguishes two broad categories:
| Dumb robots | Smart robots | |
|---|---|---|
| How they behave | Repeat a fixed sequence of programmed instructions over and over | Adapt to changing conditions and learn from data |
| Use AI? | No | Yes |
| Flexibility | Low: cannot handle anything outside the programmed routine | High: cope with novelty and respond to feedback |
| Example | A robotic arm that welds the same point on every chassis on a car assembly line | A surgical robot that adjusts its movements based on live imaging during an operation |
As AI and machine learning improve, the boundary between dumb and smart robots is blurring; many modern industrial robots now have learning features that older generations lacked.