TYPES OF ROBOTS

Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific
industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robot,
alternative ways to think about or design robots, and new
ways to manufacture them. It is expected that these new
types of robot will be able to solve real world problems when
they are finally realized.
Nano robots
Reconfigurable Robots
Soft Robots
Swarm robots
Haptic interface robots.Nanorobotics is the still largely
hypothetical technology of creating
machines or robots at or close to the
scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters).
Also known as nanobota or nanites,
they would be constructed from
molecular machines. So far, researchers have mostly
produced only parts of these complex
systems, such as bearings, sensors,
and Synthetic molecular motors, but
functioning robots have also been
made such as the entrants to the
Nanobot Robocup contest.• A few researchers have
investigated the possibility of
creating robots which can alter
their physical form to suit a
particular task, like the fictional T-
1000.
• Real robots are nowhere near that
sophisticated however, and mostly
consist of a small number of cube
shaped units, which can move
relative to their neighbours, for
example SuperBotRobots with silicone bodies
and flexible actuators (air
muscles , electroactive
polymers, and ferrofluids),
controlled using fuzzy
logic and neural networks,
look and feel different from
robots with rigid skeletons,
and are capable of different
behaviors.Inspired by colonies of insects such
as ants and bees, researchers are
modeling the behavior of swarms of
thousands of tiny robots which together
perform a useful task, such as finding
something hidden, cleaning, or spying.
• Each robot is quite simple, but
the emergent behavior of the swarm is
more complex.
• The whole set of robots can be
considered as one single distributed
system, in the same way an ant colony
can be considered a superorganism,
exhibiting swarm intelligence.
• The largest swarms so far created
include the iRobot swarm