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Robotics

The Shadow robot hand system

Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch ofengineering and science that includesmechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and others. Robotics deals with the design, construction, operation, and use of robots, as well ascomputer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing.

These technologies are used to develop machines that can substitute for humans. Robots can be used in any situation and for any purpose, but today many are used in dangerous environments (including bomb detection and de-activation), manufacturing processes, or where humans cannot survive. Robots can take on any form but some are made to resemble humans in appearance. This is said to help in the acceptance of a robot in certain replicative behaviors usually performed by people. Such robots attempt to replicate walking, lifting, speech, cognition, and basically anything a human can do. Many of today's robots are inspired by nature, contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics.

The concept of creating machines that can operate autonomously dates back to classical times, but research into the functionality and potential uses of robots did not grow substantially until the 20th century.^[1]Throughout history, it has been frequently assumed that robots will one day be able to mimic human behavior and manage tasks in a human-like fashion. Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, as technological advances continue; researching, designing, and building new robots serve various practical purposes, whether domestically,commercially, or militarily. Many robots are built to do jobs that are hazardous to people such as defusing bombs, finding survivors in unstable ruins, and exploring mines and shipwrecks. Robotics is also used in STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) as a teaching aid.

Robotics is a branch of engineering that involves the conception, design, manufacture, and operation of robots. This field overlaps with electronics, computer science, artificial intelligence, mechatronics, nanotechnology and bioengineering.

Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov is often given credit for being the first person to use the term robotics in a short story composed in the 1940s. In the story, Asimov suggested three principles to guide the behavior of robots and smart machines. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, as they are called, have survived to the present: 1. Robots must never harm human beings. 2. Robots must follow instructions from humans without violating rule 1. 3. Robots must protect themselves without violating the other rules.

EtymologyEdit

The word robotics was derived from the wordrobot, which was introduced to the public byCzech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which was published in 1920.^[2] The word robot comes from the Slavic word robota, which means labour. The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people called robots, creatures who can be mistaken for humans – very similar to the modern ideas of androids. Karel Čapek himself did not coin the word. He wrote a short letter in reference to anetymology in the Oxford English Dictionary in which he named his brother Josef Čapek as its actual originator.^[2]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Liar!", published in May 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction. Asimov was unaware that he was coining the term; since the science and technology of electrical devices is electronics, he assumed robotics already referred to the science and technology of robots. In some of Asimov's other works, he states that the first use of the word robotics was in his short storyRunaround (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942).^[3][4] However, the original publication of "Liar!" predates that of "Runaround" by ten months, so the former is generally cited as the word's origin.

HistoryEdit

See also: History of robots

In 1942, the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov created his Three Laws of Robotics.

In 1948, Norbert Wiener formulated the principles of cybernetics, the basis of practical robotics.

Fully autonomous only appeared in the second half of the 20th century. The first digitally operated and programmable robot, the Unimate, was installed in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machineand stack them. Commercial and industrial robots are widespread today and used to perform jobs more cheaply, more accurately and more reliably, than humans. They are also employed in some jobs which are too dirty, dangerous, or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, assembly, packing and packaging, mining, transport, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, safety, and the mass production of consumerand industrial goods.^[5]

Date	Significance	Robot Name	Inventor
Third century B.C. and earlier	One of the earliest descriptions of automata appears in the Lie Zi text, on a much earlier encounter betweenKing Mu of Zhou(1023–957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter allegedly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork.[6]		Yan Shi (Chinese: 偃师)
First century A.D. and earlier	Descriptions of more than 100 machines and automata, including a fire engine, a wind organ, a coin-operated machine, and a steam-powered engine, inPneumatica andAutomata by Heron of Alexandria		Ctesibius,Philo of Byzantium, Heron of Alexandria, and others
c. 420 B.C.E	A wooden, steam propelled bird, which was able to fly	Flying pigeon	Archytas of Tarentum
1206	Created early humanoid automata, programmable automaton band[7]	Robot band, hand-washing automaton,[8]automated moving peacocks[9]	Al-Jazari
1495	Designs for a humanoid robot	Mechanical Knight	Leonardo da Vinci
1738	Mechanical duck that was able to eat, flap its wings, and excrete	Digesting Duck	Jacques de Vaucanson
1898	Nikola Tesla demonstrates first radio-controlled vessel.	Teleautomaton	Nikola Tesla
1921	First fictional automatons called "robots" appear in the play R.U.R.	Rossum's Universal Robots	Karel Čapek
1930s	Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940World's Fairs	Elektro	Westinghouse Electric Corporation
1946	First general-purpose digital computer	Whirlwind	Multiple people
1948	Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors[10]	Elsie and Elmer	William Grey Walter
1956	First commercial robot, from the Unimation company founded by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, based on Devol's patents[11]	Unimate	George Devol
1961	First installed industrial robot.	Unimate	George Devol
1967 to 1972	First full-scale humanoid intelligent robot,[12][13] and first android. Its limb control system allowed it to walk with the lower limbs, and to grip and transport objects with hands, using tactile sensors. Its vision system allowed it to measure distances and directions to objects using external receptors, artificial eyes and ears. And its conversation system allowed it to communicate with a person in Japanese, with an artificial mouth. This made it the[14][15][16]	WABOT-1	Waseda University
1973	First industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes[17][18]	Famulus	KUKA Robot Group
1974	The world's firstmicrocomputercontrolled electric industrial robot, IRB 6 from ASEA, was delivered to a small mechanical engineering company in southern Sweden. The design of this robot had been patented already 1972.	IRB 6	ABB Robot Group
1975	Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product	PUMA	Victor Scheinman
1978	First object-level robot programming language, allowing robots to handle variations in object position, shape, and sensor noise.	Freddy I and II, RAPT robot programming language	Patricia Ambler andRobin Popplestone

Robotic aspectsEdit

Mechanical construction

Electrical aspect

A level of programming

There are many types of robots; they are used in many different environments and for many different uses, although being very diverse in application and form they all share three basic similarities when it comes to their construction:

1. Robots all have some kind of mechanical construction, a frame, form or shape designed to achieve a particular task. For example, a robot designed to travel across heavy dirt or mud, might use caterpillar tracks. The mechanical aspect is mostly the creator's solution to completing the assigned task and dealing with the physics of the environment around it. Form follows function.
2. Robots have electrical components which power and control the machinery. For example, the robot with caterpillar trackswould need some kind of power to move the tracker treads. That power comes in the form of electricity, which will have to travel through a wire and originate from a battery, a basicelectrical circuit. Even petrol poweredmachines that get their power mainly from petrol still require an electric current to start the combustion process which is why most petrol powered machines like cars, have batteries. The electrical aspect of robots is used for movement (through motors), sensing (where electrical signals are used to measure things like heat, sound, position, and energy status) and operation (robots need some level of electrical energy supplied to their motors and sensors in order to activate and perform basic operations)
3. All robots contain some level of computer programming code. A program is how a robot decides when or how to do something. In the caterpillar track example, a robot that needs to move across a muddy road may have the correct mechanical construction and receive the correct amount of power from its battery, but would not go anywhere without a program telling it to move. Programs are the core essence of a robot, it could have excellent mechanical and electrical construction, but if its program is poorly constructed its performance will be very poor (or it may not perform at all). There are three different types of robotic programs: remote control, artificial intelligence and hybrid. A robot with remote control programing has a preexisting set of commands that it will only perform if and when it receives a signal from a control source, typically a human being with a remote control. It is perhaps more appropriate to view devices controlled primarily by human commands as falling in the discipline of automation rather than robotics. Robots that use artificial intelligence interact with their environment on their own without a control source, and can determine reactions to objects and problems they encounter using their preexisting programming. Hybrid is a form of programming that incorporates both AI and RC functions.

ApplicationsEdit

As more and more robots are designed for specific tasks this method of classification becomes more relevant. For example, many robots are designed for assembly work, which may not be readily adaptable for other applications. They are termed as "assembly robots". For seam welding, some suppliers provide complete welding systems with the robot i.e. the welding equipment along with other material handling facilities like turntables etc. as an integrated unit. Such an integrated robotic system is called a "welding robot" even though its discrete manipulator unit could be adapted to a variety of tasks. Some robots are specifically designed for heavy load manipulation, and are labelled as "heavy duty robots".

Current and potential applications include:

• Military robots
• Caterpillar plans to develop remote controlled machines and expects to develop fully autonomous heavy robots by 2021.^[19] Some cranes already are remote controlled.
• It was demonstrated that a robot can perform a herding^[20] task.
• Robots are increasingly used in manufacturing (since the 1960s). In the auto industry, they can amount for more than half of the "labor". There are even "lights off" factories such as an IBM keyboard manufacturing factory in Texas that is 100% automated.^[21]
• Robots such as HOSPI^[22] are used ascouriers in hospitals (hospital robot). Other hospital tasks performed by robots are receptionists, guides and porters helpers.^[23]
• Robots can serve as waiters^[24][25] and cooks,^[26] also at home. Boris is a robot that can load a dishwasher.^[27] Rotimatic is a robotics kitchen appliance that cooksflatbreads automatically.^[28]
• Robot combat for sport – hobby or sport event where two or more robots fight in an arena to disable each other. This has developed from a hobby in the 1990s to several TV series worldwide.
• Cleanup of contaminated areas, such as toxic waste or nuclear facilities.^[29]
• Agricultural robots (AgRobots^[30][31]).
• Domestic robots, cleaning and caring for the elderly
• Medical robots performing low-invasive surgery
• Household robots with full use.
• Nanorobots
• Swarm robotics