Industrial robots are the most common type of robots, and they are also the kind that are used most. They are mostly used in manufacturing companies because of the nature in which they are made. They are generally meant to do tasks that are hard, laborious, dull and dangerous, the kind that humans either cannot undertake or are simply not interested to do.
Cognitive robots on the other hand, are robots which are being developed to have human characteristics such as the ability to remember, learn from past experiences and communicate with other humans. They will also be able to react according to their environment and the kind of situation they are in.
Robot cognition meets industrial robots
It has been assumed that the robots that exist already contain these kind of features, but this is hardly true. The only other kind of robots apart from the industrial robots that are so popular, (which are only made with the ability to perform just one task), that are nearly as developed as cognitive robots, are the robotic software systems that make use of artificial intelligence. These are mostly used in businesses like banks rather than in industries that manufacture products, unlike the industrial robots.
If there can be a way to incorporate the cognitive robots into industrial robots while making them, then there are chances that we will have the ideal robot which is all rounded. Industrial robots are programmed to perform the same task repetitively the entire time. They have no kind of special features whatsoever, that can allow them to manipulate objects, detect them or grasp the work at hand.
This means that these robots will do what it is meant to do, whether or not it is doing the task in the correct way and efficiently. This is a major disadvantage with the industrial robots, because one small mistake could go undetected and this could bring unprecedented losses and damage. This could however be avoided, if the industrial robot could somehow be able to understand the purpose behind its function. Check website of Universal Robots to read more about it.
Unforeseen potential
Incorporating cognitive robots will entail empowering a robot with intelligent abilities and features, which will in turn enable it to reason as well as learn in the same way that humans do. They will also be able to behave accordingly as a reaction to the world and the way that everything in it functions. This would be made possible by making the robots using some processing architecture which brings about the human like characteristics.
It has been a challenge for a while to come up with and develop cognitive robotics, due to the complexity involved. However, by adding animal cognition onto the drawing board, scientists are able to have a basic starting point for the information processing of cognitive robotics. This is a new and much more modern method of robot development, as compared to the more traditional techniques which involve artificial intelligence.
Great milestones to be achieved
The main abilities that have been targeted by cognitive robotics are planning, attention allocation, anticipation, perception processing, complex motor coordination and reasoning on not only their own mental states, but also about other agents like them as well. Therefore, cognitive robotics will focus on the behavioral aspects of intelligent agents in; a virtual world when it comes to simulated robotic cognition, as well as the physical world.
The end goal would be that this cognitive robot should be able to act accordingly in real life circumstances. One worry however is that cognitive robots will have to be created in a specific way, that will not allow flexibility in terms of where they can function or the kind of tasks that they can perform.
However, the creation of cognitive manufacturing systems is not a new concept. Because of these systems, there are endless possibilities, which involve having machines, factories and even parts like a robotic arm, with the abilities to carry out self-assessment and as a result, trigger actions and pass on information from one agent to the other.
