Background of Robotics | Science & Technology for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Introduction

Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural depositions, manufacture and application of robots. Today, robotics remains a rapidly growing field, with ongoing research and development driving innovations like humanoid robots capable of natural movement and speech, and robotic exoskeletons enhancing human capabilities across industries.

Laws of Robotics
The Laws of Robotics are a set of laws, rules, or principles, which are intended as a fundamental framework to underpin the behavior of robots designed to have a degree of autonomy. While robots of this complexity are now emerging, supplemented by modern ethical frameworks like the EU’s AI Act of 2021, they remain a staple of science fiction, films, and a focal point of active research in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Three Laws are:

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws

Applications of Robotics

• Military robots: Deployed for advanced surveillance, reconnaissance, and tactical operations in conflict zones.
• Industrial robots: Robots are increasingly used in manufacturing (since the 1960s). According to the Robotic Industries Association US data, in 2016 the automotive industry was the main customer of industrial robots with 52% of total sales. In the auto industry, they can account for more than half of the “labor”. There are even “lights off” factories such as an IBM keyboard manufacturing factory in Texas that was fully automated as early as 2003, a trend expanding with AI-driven cobots by 2025.
• Cobots (collaborative robots): Designed to work alongside humans, enhancing productivity in manufacturing and beyond.
• Construction robots: Construction robots can be separated into three types: traditional robots, robotic arm, and robotic exoskeleton, now widely used for precision building tasks.
• Agricultural robots (AgRobots): The use of robots in agriculture is closely linked to the concept of AI-assisted precision agriculture and drone usage. 1996-1998 research also proved that robots can perform a herding task, with modern systems now optimizing crop yields in 2025.
• Medical robots of various types (such as da Vinci Surgical System and Hospi): Enhanced for complex surgeries and patient care by 2025.
• Kitchen automation: Commercial examples of kitchen automation are Flippy (burgers), Zume Pizza (pizza), Cafe X (coffee), Makr Shakr (cocktails), Frobot (frozen yogurts) and Sally (salads). Home examples are Rotimatic (flatbreads baking) and Boris (dishwasher loading), now integrated with smart home ecosystems.
• Robot combat for sport: hobby or sport event where two or more robots fight in an arena to disable each other. This has developed from a hobby in the 1990s to several TV series worldwide, with advanced designs in 2025.
• Cleanup of contaminated areas, such as toxic waste or nuclear facilities: Enhanced by autonomous systems for safety.
• Domestic robots: Now include advanced assistants for household management.
• Swarm robotics: Coordinated robot groups for tasks like search and rescue.
• Autonomous drones: Used for delivery, surveillance, and disaster response.
• Sports field line marking: Automated for precision and efficiency in 2025.

Components of Robots

1. End effectors-hands of robots: Advanced grippers for diverse tasks.

2. Manipulators-arms of robot: Enhanced with flexible, multi-joint designs.

3. Actuators-robots muscles and joints: Now include energy-efficient motors.

4. Controller-brain of Robot: Upgraded with AI for real-time decision-making.

5. Sensors: Enhanced with lidar and AI vision for better environmental awareness.

Robotic process automation (RPA)
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform. These tasks can include queries, calculations and maintenance of records and transactions, now enhanced by AI for complex decision-making in 2025.
RPA technology consists of software robots (bots) that can mimic a human worker. RPA bots can log into applications, enter data, calculate and complete tasks and then log out. Currently, practitioners divide RPA technologies into three broad categories: probots, knowbots and chatbots, with new AI-driven categories emerging.

• Probots are bots that follow simple, repeatable rules to process data: Now AI-enhanced for adaptability.
• Knowbots are bots that search the internet to gather and store user-specified information: Updated for real-time data analysis.
• Chatbots are virtual agents who can respond to customer queries in real time: Now integrated with natural language processing.

RPA software is not part of an organization’s IT infrastructure. Instead, it sits on top of it, enabling a company to implement the technology quickly and efficiently — all without changing the existing infrastructure and systems. What distinguishes RPA from traditional IT automation is the ability of the RPA software to be aware and adapt to changing circumstances, exceptions and new situations. Once RPA software has been trained to capture and interpret the actions of specific processes in existing software applications, it can then manipulate data, trigger responses, initiate new actions and communicate with other systems autonomously, a capability expanded by 2025 with hyperautomation.

The evolution of RPA

Although the term “robotic process automation” can be traced to the early 2000s, it had been developing for a number of years previously. RPA evolved from three key technologies: screen scraping, workflow automation and artificial intelligence. Screen scraping is the process of collecting screen display data from a legacy application so that the data can be displayed by a more modern user interface. The advantages of workflow automation software, which eliminates the need for manual data entry and increases order fulfillment rates, include increased speed, efficiency and accuracy. Lastly, artificial intelligence involves the ability of computer systems to perform tasks that normally require human intervention and intelligence, now pivotal in RPA’s 2025 advancements.
Today, RPA software is particularly useful for organizations that have many different and complicated systems that need to interact together fluidly. For instance, if an electronic form from a human resource system is missing a zip code, traditional automation software would flag the form as having an exception and an employee would handle the exception by looking up the correct zip code and entering it on the form. Once the form is complete, the employee might send it on to payroll so the information can be entered into the organization’s payroll system. With RPA technology, however, software that has the ability to adapt, self-learn and self-correct would handle the exception and interact with the payroll system without human assistance, now leveraging AI for predictive corrections.

Benefits

• Decreased costs: Cost savings of approximately 80-90% can be achieved when a business process performed by an FTE is replaced by a software robot, a figure consistent with 2025 efficiency gains.
• Freeing up staff for higher value tasks: Automation of repetitive and time-consuming processes frees up your staff to make a more value-add contribution. For example, when assessing an insurance claim more time can be spent in the assessment as opposed to populating the same data into 5 various systems, now enhanced by AI analytics.
• Increased employee engagement: When staff can focus on high-value tasks they often feel more invested in the work they are completing. When implementing RPA projects, we often see staff engaging in repetitive activities e.g. copying data between 10 different systems while completing a single customer request, with RPA they can serve an additional 3 clients instead, boosting morale in 2025.
• Reduced operational risk: RPA reduces the rate of errors because robots make less mistakes. Avoiding purely human mistakes, such as those made while tired, or by deviating from the process, means a lower level of operational risk, further minimized by AI oversight.
• Reduced output variability: Robots are great at duplicating tasks consistently with little to no distinguishable variability. It ensures that similar tasks are handled in the same way e.g. underwriting for insurance policies is consistent across the same risk groups, now standardized by advanced algorithms.
• Reduced paper use: RPA forces digitization as it requires that companies have the data and files being manipulated by software robots in a digital form. Work that in the past may have been done partly or in full on paper, by an FTE, can now be purely electronic, supporting 2025 sustainability goals.
• Driving process improvement: In an automation project you often first analyze and then simplify (where possible) the processes to be automated, creating more manageable processes (for both people and machines). For example, if you have 10 different ways to set up a new client in your system, it would make sense to streamline this process first and then automate it, now aided by AI optimization.
• Increased output: Automation allows for work to be done 24/7/365 without people fatigue, or quality variance. Often, customers want to interact with service providers outside of a 9-5 timeframe—on evenings and weekends—automation allows you to offer this level of service, a capability expanded in 2025.
• Higher speed and throughput: Customers receive expedited service as machines are able to process requests in real time. e.g. credit checks, etc., now accelerated by AI-driven bots.
• Improved customer experience: By deploying RPA you free up expensive and high-value resources, FTEs, from more menial and repetitive tasks and put them back on the front line assisting your customers, enhancing satisfaction in 2025.
• Improved internal service levels: With RPA things like internal reports can be delivered faster and without mistakes, new employees can be set-up very quickly, and even IT issues can be enormously accelerated, now with real-time monitoring.
• Defined governance structures: RPA forces companies to define clear governance structures around IT applications by forcing organizations to agree on who owns each application. Leading to a clearer definition of access rights for each application, since robots, like humans, will need to use the same access, updated for 2025 compliance.
• An RPA virtual workforce uses all the same systems your FTEs use. This is one of greatest advantages of RPA in comparison to other automation solutions. In the past, Business Process Management solutions and workflow management tools had to be integrated with each application they interacted with. RPA simply uses the existing systems in the way your FTEs would, now seamlessly integrated with cloud systems.
• Being able to easily scale up or down your operations as needed ensures that companies can make adjustments based on seasonality. In the insurance sector, for example, a virtual workforce can be ramped up in order to process snow/hail claims in the winter, flooding in the summer, etc., now dynamically adjustable with AI.
• Virtual workforces are highly secure: Managing IT security for RPA robots is very simple as they do not change roles, leave the company, or retire. They also don’t hack your data, with security bolstered by 2025 standards.
• Increased expertise in core domains: By automating simple tasks, your company can develop increased expertise in your core domains, such as developing more sophisticated fraud analysis, and/or creating more accurate underwriting algorithms, now powered by machine learning.
• RPA eliminates customer pain points: A successfully implemented virtual workforce can enhance your customer’s experience and eliminate common customer pain points. For example, traditionally when processing a loan the customer has to fill out several forms, submit required documents. These are then sent for processing, review and approvals. The overall process can take several weeks, with multiple human touch-points, after which the customer gets a feedback on the status of their loan application. With RPA, a robot can take over the complete process, reducing turnaround time to a few days or less, now near-instant with AI.
• Impact is delivered quickly: From the moment when robots are in place – a matter of weeks – organizations start seeing benefits. The Burnie Group’s typical implementation timeline for RPA projects is approximately 8 weeks, now often faster with pre-trained bots.
• RPA solutions allow management to know the progress of SLAs in real time. Dashboards tracking the output of your virtual workforce address a frequent problem of operations and back-office managers – understanding where his/her team stands and how volumes are evolving, now with predictive analytics.
• High-quality processes and output: Similar to a recipe being created by a five-star cook, a robot’s decision making logic is designed by your best SMEs, ensuring high-quality output. Your SME transfer knowledge of best practices with the RPA team ensuring your virtual workforce is performing at the highest standard, now refined by AI insights.
• Better record keeping: Robots always document what they’ve done, not only leaving a clear audit and control track, but also allowing for easy recovery after unexpected shutdowns, now with blockchain-level traceability.
• Being an innovator: RPA is a cutting edge technology that is dramatically changing back-office operations enabling greater innovation by freeing up human labour to focus on idea-generating, a trend leading into 2025.

Applications of RPA

Some of the top applications of RPA include:

• Customer service: RPA can help companies offer better customer service by automating contact center tasks, including verifying e-signatures, uploading scanned documents and verifying information for automatic approvals or rejections, now with AI-driven personalization.
• Accounting: Organizations can use RPA for general accounting, operational accounting, transactional reporting and budgeting, enhanced by real-time financial analytics in 2025.
• Financial services: Companies in the financial services industry can use RPA for foreign exchange payments, automating account openings and closings, managing audit requests and processing insurance claims, now with blockchain integration.
• Healthcare: Medical organizations can use RPA for handling patient records, claims, customer support, account management, billing, reporting and analytics, now optimized for telemedicine.
• Human resources: RPA can automate HR tasks, including onboarding and offboarding, updating employee information and timesheet submission processes, now with AI-driven talent management.
• Supply chain management: RPA can be used for procurement, automating order processing and payments, monitoring inventory levels and tracking shipments, enhanced by IoT integration in 2025.

Robotics in Pandemics

• Disinfecting surfaces: Large and small autonomous or remote-controlled robots could be developed to locate and constantly sterilize frequently touched surfaces with ultraviolet light, a technology refined post-COVID for broader healthcare use.
• Contact Tracing: The roboticists say combining existing security systems with facial recognition software could allow authorities to retrace the steps of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and contact others who might be at risk, which is known as contact tracing, now adapted for general disaster response.
• Nasal swabs: Testing for coronavirus involves inserting a swab fairly deep into a patient’s nasal cavity.
  (i) There are parts of the process that puts humans at risk of contracting the virus, including collecting the sample, handling the sample, transferring the sample to the test location and the test itself.
  (ii) Automated or robot-assisted nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabbing may speed up the process, reduce the risk of infection, and free up staff for other tasks, now standard in automated diagnostics.
• Medicine Delivery: Autonomous drones and ground robots can be used to deliver medicine to patients who have the coronavirus, a practice expanded for rural healthcare by 2025.
• In the field hospital in Wuhan, China, CloudMinds robots were used to deliver food, drink and medicine to patients, inspiring modern healthcare logistics.

Social Robots: In the time of isolation and quarantine, social robots can help people provide social stimulation and interactions, in addition to providing reminders to follow treatment regimens (to the elderly), now widely used in eldercare and education.