Robotics: From first-order cybernetics to third-order cybernetics

Abstract

The general principles of cybernetics of various orders were formulated half a century ago. However, these principles were used primarily in philosophy, sociology, biology, economics and similar fields that can be called humanitarian. Engineering specialists practically did not use these principles in their work. In this article, an attempt is made to consider and formulate these principles, in the tasks of controlling robotic systems, in terms of cybernetics of the first, second and third orders. A new principle of classification of robotic systems is proposed, which is based on linking to generations of cyberneticians. It should be noted that the proposed principle can be extended to other areas of engineering and technical fields, for example, cognitive architectures, artificial neural networks, or genetic algorithms.