Immersive experiences and robotics

Immersive experiences let us visualise, feel and react by stimulating our senses, making interaction more realistic and engaging: 3D films, immersive video games, and training with driving and flight simulators. They are achieved with virtual reality and augmented reality.

• Virtual Reality (VR): a three-dimensional, computer-generated situation that simulates the real world. The user is immersed in it and interacts with its objects, today using a VR headset; extra senses (sound, smell, motion, temperature) make it more real. Used in gaming, military training, medical procedures, entertainment, social science, psychology and engineering.
• Augmented Reality (AR): computer-generated information superimposed on the real surroundings, making them interactive. Location-based AR apps are the main kind: users get information about nearby places and reviews, and travellers can point a camera at a historical place for real-time information. Unlike VR, AR does not create a new world; it adds to the real one.

Robotics is an interdisciplinary field (mechanical engineering, electronics, computer science) concerned with the design, building and use of robots.

• A robot is a programmable machine that carries out tasks automatically with accuracy and precision. Robots were first meant for boring, stressful or labour-heavy industrial jobs. Sensors are one of a robot's prime components.
• Types: wheeled, legged, manipulators and humanoids (robots that resemble humans).
• Examples: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER); Sophia, a humanoid that uses AI, visual data processing and facial recognition and imitates human gestures and expressions.
• A drone is an unmanned aircraft, remotely controlled or flying autonomously using software flight plans, onboard sensors and GPS. Uses: journalism, filming and aerial photography, short-distance delivery, disaster management, search and rescue, healthcare, mapping, safety inspections, agriculture, wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching, law enforcement and border patrolling.

Example (new): a medical student practising surgery on a fully computer-made patient inside a headset is using VR; a furniture app that shows how a new sofa would look in your real living room through the phone camera is AR.