Stories of artificial helpers and companions likewise attempts to create them have a long history, but fully autonomous machines appeared only in the 20th century. The word “robot” originates from the Czech word for forced labor, or serf. It was introduced by playwright Karel Capek (into his play
R.U.R. – Rossum's Universal Robots which opened in Prague in January 1921), whose fictional robotic inventions were much like Dr. Frankenstein's monster – creatures created by chemical and biological, rather than mechanical, methods.
In fact, in an essay written in 1935, Capek strongly fought that this idea was at all possible and, writing in the third person, said:
“It is with horror, frankly, that he rejects all responsibility for the idea that metal contraptions could ever replace human beings, and that by means of wires they could awaken something like life, love, or rebellion. He would deem this dark prospect to be either an overestimation of machines, or a grave offence against life.”
[The Author of Robots Defends Himself - Karl Capek, Lidove noviny, June 9, 1935, translation: Bean Comrada]
In R.U.R., Capek poses a paradise, where the machines initially bring so many benefits but in the end bring an equal amount of blight in the form of unemployment and social unrest.
The play was an enormous success and productions soon opened throughout Europe and the U.S. R.U.R's theme, in part, was the dehumanization of man in a technological civilization.
There is some evidence that the word robot was actually coined by Karl's brother Josef, a writer in his own right. In a short letter, Capek writes that he asked Josef what he should call the artificial workers in his new play. Karel suggested “labori”, which he thinks too 'bookish' and his brother mutters "then call them robots" and turns back to his work, and so from a curt response we have the word robot.
But the current mechanical robots of popular culture are not much different from these fictional biological creations.
Robotics is the science and technology of robots and their design, manufacture, and application. Robotics is related to electronics, mechanics and software.
Basically a robot consists of:
- A mechanical device such as a wheeled platform, arms, wing, legs or other construction of any kind capable of interacting with its environment
- Sensors on or around the device that are able to sense the environment and give useful feedback to the device
- Systems that process sensory input in the context of the device's current situation and instruct the device to perform actions in response to the situation
They main function are in the fields of:
Safety: Robotics have been developed to handle nuclear and radioactive chemicals for many different uses including nuclear weapons, power plants, environmental cleanup, and the processing of certain drugs and to control heavy and/or dangerous machineries.
Unpleasantness: Robots perform many tasks that are unpleasant but necessary, such as welding or janitorial work.
Repetition and precision: Assembly line work has been one of the main fields of activity of the robotics industry. Robots are used extensively in manufacturing in various fields of the industry and, more glamorously, in space exploration, where minimum maintenance requirements are emphasized.
Mechanical platforms – the hardware base
A robot consists of two main parts: the robot body and some form of artificial intelligence (AI) system. Many different body parts can be called a robot. Articulated arms are used in welding and painting; gantry and conveyor systems move parts in factories; and giant robotic machines move earth deep inside mines. One of the most interesting aspects of robots in general is their behavior, which requires a form of intelligence. The simplest behavior of a robot is locomotion. Typically, wheels are used as the underlying mechanism to make a robot move from one point to the next. And some force such as electricity is required to make the wheels turn under command.
Actuation
Actuators are the „muscles” of a robot, the parts which convert the stored energy into movement. By far the most popular actuators are the electric motors, but there are many others powered by electricity, chemicals, and compressed air.
Motors
A variety of electric motors provide power to robots, allowing them to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices with various programmed motions. The efficiency rating of a motor describes how much of the electricity consumed is converted to mechanical energy. Following there are some of the mechanical devices that are currently being used in modern robotics technology.
Driving mechanisms
Gears and chains: Gears and chains are mechanical platforms that provide a strong and accurate way to transmit rotary motion from one place to another, possibly changing it along the way. The speed change between two gears depends upon the number of teeth on each gear. When a powered gear goes through a full rotation, it pulls the chain by the number of teeth on that gear.
Pulleys and belts: Pulleys and belts, two other types of mechanical platforms used in robots, work the same way as gears and chains. Pulleys are wheels with a groove around the edge, and belts are the rubber loops that fit in that groove.
Gearboxes: A gearbox operates on the same principles as the gear and chain, without the chain. Gearboxes require closer tolerances, since instead of using a large loose chain to transfer force and adjust for mis-alignments, the gears mesh directly with each other. Examples of gearboxes can be found on the transmission in a car, the timing mechanism in a grandfather clock, and the paper-feed of your printer.
Power supplies
Power supplies are generally provided by two types of battery. Primary batteries are used once and then discarded; secondary batteries operate from a (mostly) reversible chemical reaction and can be recharged several times. Primary batteries have higher density and a lower self-discharge rate. Secondary (rechargeable) batteries have less energy than primary batteries, but can be recharged up to a thousand times depending on their chemistry and environment. Typically the first use of a rechargeable battery gives 4 hours of continuous operation in an application or robot.
Electronic control
There are two major hardware platforms in a robot. The mechanical platform of unregulated voltages, power and back-EMF spikes, and the electronic platform of clean power and 5-volt signals. These two platforms need to be bridged in order for digital logic to control mechanical systems. The classic component for this is a bridge relay. A control signal generates a magnetic field in the relay's coil that physically closes a switch. MOSFETs, for example, are highly efficient silicon switches, available in many sizes like the transistor that can operate as a solid state relay to control the mechanical systems.
On the other hand, larger sized robots may require a PMDC motor in which the value of the MOSFET's “on” resistance Rds(on) results in great increases in the heat dissipation of the chip, thereby significantly reducing the chip's heat temperature. Junction temperatures within the MOSFET and the coefficients of conduction of the MOSFET package and heat sink are other important characteristics of PMDC motors.
Open source robot control software
OROCOS (Open RObot COntrol Software) is an effort to start up an open source robot control software project. Broad discussions are being held about what experiences, code and tools can be re-used from other projects, what open standards should be integrated into the project and what organizational structure is most appropriate for the project. Goals of the project are to develop robot control software as follows:
- Under open source and/or free software license(s)
- As modular as possible
- Of the highest quality (from both technical and software engineering perspectives)
- Independent of (but compatible with) commercial robot manufacturers
- For all sorts of robotic devices and computer platforms
- Localized for all programming languages
- Featuring configurable software components for kinematics, dynamics, planning, sensing, control, hardware interfacing, etc.
The project aims to become more than just a copy of existing commercial robot controllers or robot simulation/programming packages. The OROCOS project wants to develop shareable libraries, stand-alone components (sometimes referred to as software agents), and a configurable run-time environment from which to eliminate and control all distributed robotics systems. These types of projects are useful in several ways:
- For re-using code
- For use as an independent sub-system
- For copying their organizational structure
- For learning from the experience of managing an open source project
- For designing and developing extensible and reusable software
A short history:
First century A.D. and earlier
Significance: Descriptions of more than 100 machines and automata, including a fire engine, a wind organ, a coin-operated machine, and a steam-powered engine, in Pneumatica and Automata by Heron of Alexandria
Inventator: Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium, Heron of Alexandria, and others
1206
Significance: programable Humanoid Automatons
The name: Boat with four musicians Inventor: Al-Jazari
circa 1495
Significance: Designs for a humanoid robot
The name: Mechanical knight Inventor: Leonardo da Vinci
1738
Significance: Mechanical duck that was able to eat, flap its wings, and excrete
The name: Digesting Duck Inventor: Jacques de Vaucanson
1800s
Significance: Japanese mechanical toys that served tea, fired arrows, and painted
The name: Karakuri toys Inventor: Tanaka Hisashige
1921
Significance: First fictional automatons called “robots” appear in the play R.U.R.
The name: Rossum's Universal Robots Inventor: Karel Capek
anii 1930
Significance: Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 Worlds' Fairs
The name: Elektro Inventor: Westinghouse Electric Corporation
1948
Significance: Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors
The name: Elsie and Elmer Inventor: William Grey Walter
1956
Significance: First commercial robot, from the Unimation company founded by George Devol and Joseph Engelberg based on Devol's patents
The name: Unimate nventor: George Devol
1961
Significance: First installed industrial robot
The name: Unimate Inventor: George Devol
1963
Significance: First palletizing robot
The name: Palletizer Inventor: Fuji Yusoki Kogyo
1973
Significance: First industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes
The name: Famulus Inventor: Kuka Robot Group
1975
Significance: Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product
The name: Puma Inventor: Victor Scheinman
Industrial robots
Though not humanoid in form, machines with flexible behaviour and a few humanlike physical attributes have been developed for industry. The first stationary industrial robot was the programmable Unimate, an electronically controlled hydraulic heavy-lifting arm that could repeat arbitrary sequences of motions. It was invented in 1954 by the American engineer George Devol and was developed by Unimation Inc., a company founded in 1956 by American engineer Joseph Engelberger. In 1959 a prototype of the Unimate was introduced in a General Motors Corporation die-casting factory in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1961 Condec Corp. (after purchasing Unimation the preceding year) delivered the world’s first production-line robot to the GM factory; it had the unsavoury task (for humans) of removing and stacking hot metal parts from a die-casting machine. Unimate arms continue to be developed and sold by licensees around the world, with the automobile industry remaining the largest buyer.
Starting from that idea, the robots had developed into various forms and designs, in order to accomplish different tasks. Their interaction with the environment improved considerably.
Sensing - Touch
Current robotic and prosthetic hands receive far less tactile information than the human hand. Recent research has developed a tactile sensor array that mimics the mechanical properties and touch receptors of human fingertips. The sensor array is constructed as a rigid core surrounded by conductive fluid contained by an elastomeric skin. Electrodes are mounted on the surface of the rigid core and are connected to an impedance-measuring device within the core. When the artificial skin touches an object the fluid path around the electrodes is deformed, producing impedance changes that map the forces received from the object. The researchers expect that an important function of such artificial fingertips will be adjusting robotic grip on held objects.
Environmental interaction and navigation
Robots also require navigation hardware and software in order to anticipate on their environment. In particular unforeseen events (eg people and other obstacles that are not stationary) can cause problems or collisions. Some highly advanced robots as ASIMO, EveR-1, Meinu robot have particular good robot navigation hardware and software. Also, the self-controlled cars, Ernst Dickmanns' driverless car and the entries in the DARPA Grand Challenge are capable of sensing the environment well and make navigation decisions based on this information. Most of the robots include regular a GPS navigation device with waypoints, along with radar, sometimes combined with other sensor data such as LIDAR, video cameras and inertial guidance systems for better navigation in between waypoints.
Manipulation
Robots which must work in the real world require some way to manipulate objects; pick up, modify, destroy, or otherwise have an effect. Thus the 'hands' of a robot are often referred to as end effectors, while the arm is referred to as a manipulator. Most robot arms have replaceable effectors, each allowing them to perform some small range of tasks. Some have a fixed manipulator which can not be replaced, while a few have one very general purpose manipulator, for example a humanoid hand.
Rolling robots
For simplicity, most mobile robots have four wheels. However, some researchers have tried to create more complex wheeled robots, with only one or two wheels. The sci-fi movies have been proposed motorcycles robots, as they appear in the latest Terminator movie (“Terminator Salvation”).
Walking robots
Walking is a difficult and dynamic problem to solve. Several robots have been made which can walk reliably on two legs, however none have yet been made which are as robust as a human. Many other robots have been built that walk on more than two legs, due to these robots being significantly easier to construct. Hybrids too have been proposed in movies as “I robot”, where they walk on 2 legs and switch to 4 (arms+legs) when going to a sprint. Typically, robots on 2 legs can walk well on flat floors, and can occasionally walk up stairs. None can walk over rocky, uneven terrain.
Flying
A modern passenger airliner is essentially a flying robot, with two humans to manage it. The autopilot can control the plane for each stage of the journey, including takeoff, normal flight, and even landing. Other flying robots are uninhabited, and are known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They can be smaller and lighter without a human pilot onboard, and fly into dangerous territory for military surveillance missions. Some can even fire on targets under command. UAVs are also being developed which can fire on targets automatically, without the need for a command from a human. However these robots are unlikely to see service in the foreseeable future because of the morality issues involved. Other flying robots include cruise missiles, the Entomopter and the Epson micro helicopter robot. Robots such as the Air Penguin, Air Ray and Air Jelly have lighter-than-air bodies, propelled by paddles, and guided by sonar.
Snaking
Several snake robots have been successfully developed. Mimicking the way real snakes move, these robots can navigate very confined spaces, meaning they may one day be used to search for people trapped in collapsed buildings. The Japanese ACM-R5 snake robot can even navigate both on land and in water.
Skating
A small number of skating robots have been developed, one of which is a multi-mode walking and skating device, Titan VIII. It has four legs, with unpowered wheels, which can either step or roll. Another robot, Plen, can use a miniature skateboard or rollerskates, and skate across a desktop.
Climbing
Several different approaches have been used to develop robots that have the ability to climb vertical surfaces. One approach mimicks the movements of a human climber on a wall with protrusions; adjusting the center of the mass and moving each limb in turn to gain leverage. An example of this is Capuchin, built by Stanford University, California. Another approach uses the specialised toe pad method of wall-climbing geckoes, which can run on smooth surfaces such as vertical glass. Examples of this approach include Wallbot and Stickybot. A third approach is to mimick the motion of a snake climbing a pole.
Swimming
It is calculated that when swimming some fish can achieve a propulsive efficiency greater than 90%. Furthermore, they can accelerate and maneuver far better than any man-made boat or submarine and produce less noise and water disturbance. Therefore, many researchers studying underwater robots would like to copy this type of locomotion. Notable examples are the Essex University Computer Science Robotic Fish and the Robot Tuna built by the Institute of field robotics to analyze and mathematically model thunniform motion. The Aqua Penguin, designed and built by Festo of Germany, copies the streamlined shape and propulsion by front “flippers” of penguins. Festo have also built the Aqua Ray and Aqua Jelly, which emulate the locomotion of manta ray, and jellyfish, respectively.
Human interaction
If robots are to work effectively in homes and other non-industrial environments, the way they are instructed to perform their jobs, and especially how they will be told to stop will be of critical importance. The people who interact with them may have little or no training in robotics, and so any interface will need to be extremely intuitive. Science fiction authors also typically assume that robots will eventually be capable of communicating with humans through speech, gestures and facial expressions, rather than a command-line interface. Although speech would be the most natural way for the human to communicate, it is quite unnatural for the robot. It will be quite a while before robots interact as naturally as the fictional C-3PO or the Terminators.
Robot research
Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robots, alternative ways to think about or design robots, and new ways to manufacture them.
A first particular new innovation in robot design is composed from the open sourcing of robot-projects. To describe the level of advancement of a robot, the term Generation Robots can be used. This term is coined by the professor Hans Moravec, pioneer in mobile robot research and principal research scientist at/founder of the Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in describing the near future evolution of robot technology.
First generation robots, as Moravec predicted in 1997, a generation of broadly-capable “universal robots” – the “servant” robots, will be able to run application programs for many simple chores and should have an intellectual capacity (mental power and inflexible behavior) comparable to perhaps a lizard (or other small reptile) and should become available by 2010.
As Moravec's predictions, in 2015 the utility robots will host programs for several tasks. Larger “Utility Robot” with manipulator arms able to run several different programs to perform different tasks may follow single-purpose home robots. Their tens of billion calculation per second computers would support narrow inflexible competences, perhaps comparable to the skills of an amphibian, like a frog.
Because the first generation robot would be incapable of learning, however, professor Moravec predicts that the second generation robot would be an improvement over the first and become available by 2020, with an intelligence maybe comparable to that of a mouse. Robot competence will become comparable to larger mammals. In the decades following the first universal robots, a second generation with mammallike brainpower and cognitive ability will emerge. They will have a conditioned learning mechanism, and steer among alternative paths in their application programs on the basis of past experience, gradually adapting to their special circumstances.
The third generation robot (about 2030) should have an intelligence comparable to small primates and maintain physical, cultural and psychological models of their world to mentally rehearse and optimize tasks before physically performing them.
A fourth generation, humanlike – robots with human intelligence, will abstract and reason from the world model. Moravec does not predict this happening before around 2040 or 2050.
The second particular new innovation is Evolutionary Robotics. This is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to help design robots, especially the body form, or motion and behavior controllers. In a similar way to natural evolution, a large population of robots is allowed to compete in some way, or their ability to perform a task is measured using a fitness function. Those that perform worst are removed from the population and replaced by a new set, which have new behaviors based on those of the winners. Over time the population improves, and eventually a satisfactory robot may appear. This happens without any direct programming of the robots by the researchers. Researchers use this method both to create better robots and to explore the nature of evolution. Because the process often requires many generations of robots to be simulated, this technique may be run entirely or mostly in simulation, then tested on real robots once the evolved algorithms are good enough. Currently, there are about 1 million industrial robots toiling around the world, and Japan is the top country having high density of utilizing robots in its manufacturing industry.
According to Hans Moravec, our robot creations are evolving similar to how life on Earth evolved, only at warp speed. By his calculations, by the middle of the century no human task, physical or intellectual, will be beyond the scope of robots. If Moravec is correct in his predictions, it won’t be long before robots will have cognition. With daily breakthroughs happening in the robotic community, it may happen even sooner. They will be able to think autonomously and the robot intelligence and capabilities would equal (and most likely quickly surpass) any human capability.
That likely possibility begs the question: what happens when robots are superior to their creators? The sci-fi movies have “studied” the problem for some time with different and very various stories: the popular “robot takeover”, or humans evolving into advance robots, combining the organic and anorganic, or even escaping the biological tissues and becoming fully anorganic robots but retaining their entities. That idea seems much further away, but whatever the case may be, there are changes ahead. Until now the organic computers (the life) had the absolute supremacy on this planet, but it is going to change.