> “Your washing machine is a robot. Your dishwasher is a robot.
I'd argue that most dishwashers and washing machines are not robots, because they follow a pre-set sequence rather than responding interactively to their environment. Some might have a degree of closed loop control (eg. temperature control, automatic load size selection) but nothing that you would really count as perceiving their environment.
As for what we will call a robot, the trend seems more the opposite. Twenty years ago an autonomous car would absolutely have been called a robot, whereas now we carefully avoid the word when referring to anything but a robot arm.
Most of the robots in the manufacturing industry are following a pre-set sequence. Why do we call them a robot whereas most people would not call a dishwasher a robot?
I think what we (as a society) call a robot is a machine that has some degree of versatility:
- an industrial robot can be programmed to achieve a different task (even if the sequence is pre-set, it is easy to set a different sequence for a different need), and the same kind of robots can be used to achieve many different tasks
- a food processor can make many different recipes
- a Roomba can adapt its behavior to the room (it has some degree of versatility because it can adapt to the conditions)
... but a dishwasher has a single purpose, which is why we usually do not call it a robot (even if it has sensors, actuators, some algorithms, etc.). If the dishwasher was also capable of cooking dishes, it would be more versatile and we would call this a robot (think of a humanoid torso that could do the dishes but also cook your eggs).
And the most versatile robots like a fully-featured humanoid is probably what we all have in mind when talk about robots.
Overall, we could say that we have degrees of versatility and therefore degrees of 'roboticity'. The lower level is the dishwasher, the highest level is the humanoid.
Good point on the multi-function thing. Specifically the hardware has to be adaptable - if you can add new, different functionality outside of the original domain just by changing the software, then that's necessary (but not sufficient on its own) to be considered 'robotic'.
There are plenty of things considered robots that follow a preset sequence and don't directly respond to their environment. For example, animatronics at theme parks, in movies and at certain types of restaurants are types of robots, and none of those act outside of a fixed pattern. The type of robot used on Robot Wars or Battlebots doesn't really perceive its environment, and acts closer to a typical drone. The automatons inventors used to make before computers became a thing are often considered robots.
Really, the definition of a robot is pretty vague, and usually along the lines of 'a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically'. Or maybe not.
I'd argue that most dishwashers and washing machines are not robots, because they follow a pre-set sequence rather than responding interactively to their environment. Some might have a degree of closed loop control (eg. temperature control, automatic load size selection) but nothing that you would really count as perceiving their environment.
As for what we will call a robot, the trend seems more the opposite. Twenty years ago an autonomous car would absolutely have been called a robot, whereas now we carefully avoid the word when referring to anything but a robot arm.