The technical term robotics deals with the design, construction and operation of robots. It is therefore a mixture of different engineering fields such as mechanical engineering, electronics, information technology and AI. Such robots are used, for example, for robotic process automation (RPA), which is a form of business process automation (BPA). The linking of robotics and AI is already bearing impressive fruit.
For example, researchers at NVIDIA have developed a deep-learning-based system that allows a robot to perform a task simply by watching a human do it. This could eventually be used to teach robots to perform a task alongside humans, for example on a production floor. We are likely to see more breakthroughs like this in robotics, driven by advances in AI. As exciting as these developments are, it is beyond the scope of this book to go into more detail about robotics, and we will limit ourselves to the AI part.
