Robotics : science and technology

Although the word "robot" appeared early in the last century and has since fed the collective imagination, Unimate, the first industrial robot, didn't appear until 1961 on the assembly lines of General Motors. 50 years after Unimate, the Collège de France's Technological Innovation Liliane Bettencourt Chair is dedicated to robotics. A dozen lectures and as many seminars have drawn on more than 50 years of research, illustrating a "knowledge in the making", a knowledge stimulated by vast fields of application that go beyond the sole sectors of industrial production, stretched between science and technology, crowned with great successes, nourishing old dreams. The closing colloquium is an exceptional event. For the first time, it brings together in one place nine of the most influential figures in the emerging history of a major discipline.