Today, most robots are used in industry, but robots are also generally developed for use by people, i.e. private consumers.
Nowadays, a lot of robots are also being designed for use in entertainment and healthcare, such as one that serves social needs, for example Aibo dog robot.
In general, robots perform tasks that are too simple, dirty or dangerous for humans, or for which human fine motor skills are not accurate enough. Applications include e.g. floor cleaning, lawn mowing, detoxification, underwater and space exploration, surgery, mining, search and rescue, explosives locating and military applications.
Vacuuming and lawn mowing robots have been developed for households, for example, but they have not become common yet. Robot vacuum cleaners are automatic, wireless vacuum cleaners with an intelligent cleaning system. The first manufacturer of robot vacuum cleaners was Electrolux. Today, one of the most successful manufacturers is iRobot.
Service robotics is a developing area. Joseph Engelberger, who developed an industrial robot, later moved on to develop service robots. His company has produced a trolley-type solution for the distribution of medicines and other small goods in hospitals. Outside of industry, there are sites where industrial robots can be used. For example, in the sorting of return bottles in the Sello shopping center in Espoo, a robot was putting bottles into baskets between 2003 and 2010. Robots are also used in laboratories for the automation of sample processing when the number of samples processed daily is large.
