  Robotics is called to be the next technological revolution and estimations
indicate that it will trigger the fourth industrial revolution. This article
presents a review of some of the most relevant milestones that occurred in
robotics over the last few decades and future perspectives. Despite the fact
that, nowadays, robotics is an emerging field, the challenges in many
technological aspects and more importantly bringing innovative solutions to the
market still remain open. The need of reducing the integration time, costs and
a common hardware infrastructure are discussed and further analysed in this
work. We conclude with a discussion of the future perspectives of robotics as
an engineering discipline and with suggestions for future research directions.
