Integrating robots into the Internet of Things

Abstract

According to various reports, the number of robots used worldwide is constantly increasing. They are more and more present in different workplaces such as manufacturing, processing operations, dangerous areas, medical environments, military, inaccessible areas etc. Also, robots are able to do social works like assisting people with disabilities or even playing when toys are robotic techniques based. In our days ICT applications became more complex while including various technologies such as wireless communication, wireless or embedded sensor networks, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, cloud computing/storing etc. Due to the new IPV6 protocol every entity in this world could be uniquely identified and be a part of an infrastructure that enables connections between different entities (living or non-living), using different but interoperable communication protocols. Furthermore, everyday entities are becoming either source of information or consumer or both, having communication capabilities and being able to collectively solve complex problems. But, where are the robots? First developed as a tool, nowadays a robot can be integrated as an entity in the new paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT). Thus, in the IoT, a robot can be connected as a and establish connections with other things over the Internet. Despite some raised technical issues, the integration of robots within the IoT can offer great advantages in many fields, some of them presented in this paper where aspects related to the technologies involved in the transformation of the robot from a tool to a thing connected to the Internet of Things are presented.