Simplifying robotics - A challenge for research

Robotics is a complex discipline and this complexity may be one of the factors limiting the growth of application areas. If one compares the engineering activities needed to build robotic systems with other fields of engineering, one finds higher cost factors due to uncertainties in performance and system cost. When this factor is coupled with the wide range of technical expertise needed to work with robotics technology, one can understand why new developments are so expensive. One solution to this problem is to evolve robotic system components which are simpler and more reliable to reduce performance uncertainties and hence costs. We have evolved some simplified approaches to teleoperation and remote programming, force control, graphical user interface software, vision sensing and calibration. Each of these is outlined in the paper. Simple ideas are more difficult to create than complicated ones. We need to simplify robotics so we can build complex systems with less effort and more certainty.