ROBOT!CS V/S MECHATRONICS

Well origin of Robotics is not known precisely. Throughout history its been effort of human to create a machine that can mimic living beings like human itself autonomously in all fields with much more efficiency. So in this regard came in a combined effort combining of all the disciplines of Engineering including Mechanical Engineering , Electrical Engineering , Computer Science Engineering and may others.

Well this term is often misunderstood with Mechatronics which is literally the 'marriage' of Mechanical Engineering to Electronics Engineering . Speaking of the current scenario this family now includes nearly all the disciples of Engineering. Mathematically we can say that Robotics and Mechatronics are two different sets which intersect each other yet none is a subset of the other.

The difference between the two is same as the difference between Automatic and Autonomous, That is, for mechatronic appliances the inputs are 'provided' to the system whereas robots 'acquire' their own inputs.

The differences can be made more clear from the example of an Aeroplane and a Drone. Both fly and can be used for survey , transportation and many more such things. The difference is that an aeroplane would require a pilot to give the commands and accordingly a suitable action takes place..But Drone on the other hand is programmed so as to scan the surroundings and acquire its own command and do the task its been designed for.The latest success here is that a drone was used by Amazon to deliver its product. This was the first successful attempt in this field.It makes use of GPS system autonomously ,finds the customer's house and deliver it.It only serves two nearby customers now, which clearly makes it a promotional stunt rather than a real delivery method. But it claims that it will increase that number to a few dozen before long, and later to hundreds.

To get some basic knowledge and be more than an Amateur in the field of Robotics you can refer to :

1) NPTEL Lectures on robotics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaWMvEY3Qgc&list=PLF09C5B3C6972DB12)

2) For Bookworms you can read :

->Springer Handbook of Robotics : Bruno Siliano , Qussarna Khatib

-> Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots : Roland Siegwart , Illah Raza Nourbaksh , Davide Scaramuzza

-> Probabilistic Robotics : Sebstian Thrun , Wolfarn Burgard , Dieter Fox.

And yes Keep visiting these blogs to enhance your knowledge about robotics and other related things :)