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Comment by im_down_w_otp | Hacker News Reader

For the uninitiated, the term "Robotic Process Automation" isn't about physical/articulating robots performing tasks that interact with their environment. It's a term used to describe something much more akin to back-office software automation in most cases.

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In my opinion a complete misuse of the term "robotic". Similarly how the term "AI" was (and is) abused by tech companies marketing departments.

I really like IBMs marketing of Watson as cognitive computing / cognitive enhancement / cognitive assistance.

robotic as in "resembling or characteristic of a robot, especially in being stiff or unemotional."

Basically, it makes it clear that RPA is just macro recording, without any 'subtlety' or margin of errors (one pixel shift will break RPA)

Calling it "macro recording" would make it maximally clear that this was macro recording, I think.

But that's just wrong. Most RPA Software (like UiPath) uses selectors for web and desktop automation. You can use static or dynamic selectors, anchors and lots of other techniques to tell the bot where to click/type.

It's very dynamic and a well written bot will work even after changes to the website or software. Also, pure RPA is usually only used on legacy software without any other APIs, so they rarely change.

Source: RPA/IPA Dev

> one pixel shift will break RPA

The RPA systems I looked at supported fuzzy matching for images and text.

I learned this term when I was looking for roles in the robotics industry. There are lots of RPA jobs that show up when you’re looking for robotics jobs.

I didn’t know until your post what it actually was (just what it wasn’t)

I like to think of it as glorified VBA macros, as most software of this class runs on top of Windows automating desktop apps.

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