Future Trends

Robotics still has a long way to go before it can break out of the quite restrictive industrial applications to which it is currently being applied. The majority of installations require little sensory capability or, indeed, flexibility of operation. The many reasons for this are best illustrated through a description of some of the current worldwide research work in robotics, and how this will affect the performance capabilities of future robotic installations. This leads naturally on to a discussion of future application areas for the technology. It should be borne in mind throughout this chapter that the relative cost of computing hardware is still falling. Therefore, projects which presently appear very expensive in computation time and hardware costs may well become viable in five or ten years time.