At its core, the pursuit of technology should be driven by the desire to improve human life. Robots embody some of the highest levels of technical innovations to combine motion, perception, decision-making, and intelligence into products and systems that shape our world. Robots facilitate artificial-intelligence (AI) powered systems to interact with the real world, bringing unprecedented efficiency, adaptability, and autonomy to countless applications. Robotics bridges the gap between AI and physical applications by equipping AI with mechanical structures capable of movement, manipulation, and real-world interaction. This physical embodiment of AI has led to breakthroughs in fields such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and personal assistance.
In manufacturing, industrial robots have turned fixed automation into flexible automation. AI-driven robots such as humanoids will revolutionize manufacturing automation. Autonomous robots in warehouses optimize supply chains by moving and sorting goods efficiently and dynamically. In medicine, AI-integrated surgical robots are transforming the medical field by enhancing accuracy and precision, reducing human error, and performing complex procedures that are not possible by surgeons alone. AI-powered robotic prosthetics adapt to users' movements, providing enhanced mobility and independence to individuals with disabilities. In homes, AI-powered smart devices and personal assistants learn from and adapt to user behavior, making life more convenient and interconnected.
Recently, ASME Robotics Technology Group (RTG) has been tasked to develop a current robotics roadmap for translational research in robotics to embody mechanical and physical necessities, to identify opportunities and challenges, and to bridge the gaps between foundational research and real-world applications for the development and deployment of AI-powered robotic systems and devices. ASME Letters of Translational Robotics was one of the outcomes of this collaborative effort conducted by the RTG. As the first ASME journal in translational research, its mission is to document archival innovations that lead to new best practice in the design, realization, and deployment of robotic devices and systems and to bring advances in robotics research to the practicing engineer by emphasizing creative solutions to real-world problems and sharing innovations and implementation details.
It is an honor to introduce to you the inaugural issue of the new ASME Letters in Translational Robotics. It includes a condensed version of 2024 ASME Robotics Roadmap as well as a set of research papers on a wide range of topics in translational robotics such as enabling technologies for planetary mobility, frequency domain identification, and motion correction schemes of an industrial parallel robot, multi-robot scan-n-print for wire arc additive manufacturing, and wire arc additive manufacturing with infrared image feedback. We hope you will find these topics to be exciting and highly relevant and we welcome you to join the community of translational robotics to drive future robotic technologies and engineering solutions to improve human life.
