Inside the World of Computing

6Some Areas of Application

The technological building blocks that we have just described can be found, in whole or in part, in the various fields of computer use. We have selected seven of them: robots, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), health, the connected (and soon autonomous?) car, the smart city, smart mobility and the factory of the future.

6.1. Robots

This sentence of Aristotle (384–322 BCE) holds our attention: “For if each instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the status of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, ‘of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods’; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves” (Book I, Part IV)¹.

The word robot is a Czech word formed in regard to robota (hard work, drudgery) and was used in 1920 by the writer Karel Tchapek. From time immemorial, humans have sought to design tools capable of facilitating their activities. But they have also tried to create machines with capabilities resembling those of living beings. The history of robotics is part of the development of these two approaches.

6.1.1. A bit of history

There are three main stages in the development of robots.

6.1.1.1. Automatons

Without going back to Antiquity, let us see how automatons have multiplied and perfected over time.

The first animated clocks were created ...