Cybernetics Spells the New Dawn for Robotics

Cybernetics as a concept is relatively dormant in the Robotics sphere. It is an interdisciplinary study of communication and control systems driven by feedback mechanisms. Cybernetics involves electrical systems in general and robotics in particular. In the last 30 years, it has been under a boom-bust cycle only to be dominated by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Cybernetics includes concepts such as cognition, adaptation, social control, emergence, communication, efficiency, and interconnectivity, which makes it very much similar to machine learning. By virtue of the above-said features, Cybernetics is slowly emerging as an alternative autonomous and innovative AI/ML technology requiring minimal human intervention.

You might wonder how cybernetics is applied to a complex system like Robotics. Models with Cybernetic technology, compare what is happening to a system at various sampling times to a pre-set standard of what should be happening, to adjust the system's behavior accordingly. This is all achieved through a feedback mechanism. Cybernetics when applied in Robotics would make systems sense, plan and act with situational awareness. The sensors calibrated to identify real-life situations drive the robotic systems for driverless cars, manufacturing, and home care robots, and medical robots.