Page 285 - Concise Encyclopedia of Robotics

anthill, or like bees in a hive. While the individual machines lack artificial
intelligence (AI), the group as a whole is intelligent.
Fourth generation and beyond
Any robot of a sort yet to be seriously put into operation is a fourth-
generation robot. Examples of these might be robots that reproduce and
evolve, or that incorporate biological as well as mechanical components.
Past that, we might say that a fifth-generation robot is something no one
has yet designed or conceived. Robot Generations
The table summarizes robot generations, their times of development,
and their capabilities.
Robot generations: comparison of features
Generation Time First Used Capabilities
First Before 1980 Mechanical
Stationary
Good precision
High speed
Physical ruggedness
Use of servomechanisms
No external sensors
No artificial intelligence
Second 1980–1990 Tactile sensors
Vision systems
Position sensors
Pressure sensors
Microcomputer control
Programmable
Third Mid-1990s and after Mobile
Autonomous
Insectlike
Artificial intelligence
Speech recognition
Speech synthesis
Navigation systems
Teleoperated

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