Chairman Tony Brown welcomed club members to the 502nd meeting of Henley Probus and following a short business update, including a report from the Treasurer.
The speaker this month was Nigel Balchin, a member of Henley Men’s Probus Club, who was filling in for a speaker who had contracted covid.
The topic which Nigel covered was General Purpose Humanoid Robotics and it essentially covered the development of Robotics. It started around 1980 and progress in the first 10 years was very slow. The second 10 year period saw a focus on Motion of Robotics but again progress was slow. Between 2000-2015 there was good progress and the military sector became fully engaged in its development; Robots in car factories and companies such as Amazon were by this stage fully engaged. There was also the introduction of Robotic Arms in factories and Robotic Dogs in activities such as bomb disposal, security and military. In the period 2015-2020 there was considerable progress in further robotic developments especially the combining of `arms and legs ‘ of the robots.
Since 2020, robotic capabilities have been accelerated exponentially by applying Artificial Intelligence to the development process but Nigel emphasised that there were shortcomings that needed to be further developed quoting self drive cars as an example- significant investment is being made in a large number of areas including military activities. The talk concluded with thanks and a very warm message of appreciation from Club members.
