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R ES E A RC H I N M E D I CA L RO BOT I C S Guillermo Caletti, Ph.D. Chief of Clinical Operations at Boehringer Ingelheim for Mexico and Central America.
What is a robot? The word “robot” was used by the Czech novelist Karel Čapek in his 1920 play entitled R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robot). “Robot” in Czech is a word for a worker or servant.
“The word robot which Josef Capek [K arel’s brother] coined for the play, based on the C zech word robota , ‘forced labor,’ has become a part of most modern languages .” – L ewis , Utopian Literature , pp. 38-9. “A robot is a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.” – Robot Institute of America, 1979. “Such a definition leaves out tools with a single task (e.g., a stapler), anything that cannot move (e.g., image analysis algorithms), and all nonprogrammable mechanisms (e.g., purely manual laparoscopic tools). As a result, robots are generally indicated for tasks requiring programmable motions, particularly where those motions are to be quick, strong, precise, accurate, untiring, and/or made via complex articulations.” (Beasley, 2012)
COLUMN ACADEMICS
