What robotics are?

Robotics are insert in a technology branch, which is constituted by several elements: Computers, automated mechanical parts, integrated circuits, sensors (and so on), that turn mechanical motorized systems, automatically controlled by electric circuits.

Image 1 - Humanoid Robot

In spite of some robots look like some kind of living "thing" that do its thing autonomously, they are in their essence just a combination of logic programming that makes them react with the environment changes, according to their programming.

Robots are usually known by their humanoid shape (like in Image 1), much due to scientific fiction movies, but that's not the reality. In fact, build robots based just on that shape is a huge irrational limitation, since that for some tasks it can be very restrictive. For example, if we want a robot for palletizing we just need the set of components to do it, that usually are a mechanical arm (Image 2). This configuration is very useful in industrial complexes and is being used for years.

Image 2 - Palletizing Robotic Arm