When we talk about smart robots, we are not necessarily referring to an advanced artificial intelligence like those in a science fiction movie or a supercomputer that wins the Jeopardy championship, although those are some very smart robots. The definition of a smart robot is actually much broader and includes some devices you may not have originally considered smart.
A smart robot is simply any device that uses sensors to measure some condition in its environment, then decides what to do next based on a set of pre-programmed instructions. They have some kind of computer or controller acting as their brain that processes the sensor information and interprets these instructions. You can think of the software loaded into the robot as the set of instructions that the smart robot follows. The software's programming allows a smart robot to make an observation, then make a decision based on this observation. Of course, a person must first build the robot and write the software, but after that, a smart robot operates on its own without human intervention.
To put it more concisely, a smart robot is a machine that does all of the following things or has all of the following features:
- It is able to follow a series of pre-programmed instructions specified by the user or engineer
- It is able to makes an observation about the outside world
- It has a central computer or other type of controller that interprets both the instructions in the software and the data from the sensor
- It is able to make a decision and react based on the observation, following the instructions defined in the program
- It is able to complete all of the preceding steps automatically, without human intervention
The ability to make a decision on its own without help from a person is what makes a robot smart. The more decisions a robot can make on its own, the smarter it is.
As you can see, this definition still includes the obvious examples of smart robots that we discussed earlier, but it also includes some simpler devices. Using this definition, a robotic vacuum cleaner is considered a smart robot!