Robotics and Technology

On September 27, 2011, a seminar on
Robotics was held in the Arjan Hall by
Syndicate West. A vast number of
topics under the field of robotics was
covered and presented in simple manner
such that young school children could
comprehend. It was an informative and
entertaining seminar. Here is a review
of it.

A robot is a mechanical intelligent agent which
can perform tasks on its own, or with guidance.
In practice a robot is usually an electro-
mechanical machine which is guided by
computer and electronic programming. The
word robot comes from the Czech word ‘robota’
which means self-labour. It was coined by Czech
writer Karel Čapek in his book Rossum’s
Universal Robots in 1920. In an article in the
Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he
explained that he had originally wanted to call
the creatures laboři. However, he did not like the
word, and sought advice from his brother Josef,
who suggested "roboti".

The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, was
coined by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov and
John W. Campbell created the "Three Laws of Robotics" which
are a recurring theme in his books.
oA robot may not injure a human being or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
oA robot must obey any orders given to it by human
beings, except where such orders would conflict with
the First Law.
oA robot must protect its own existence as long as
such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Law.

•In the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of
Tarentum postulated a mechanical steam-operated bird he
called "The Pigeon".
•Hero of Alexandria (10–70 AD), a Greek mathematician and
inventor, created numerous user-configurable automated
devices, and described machines powered by air pressure,
steam and water.
•In ancient China, the 3rd century BC text of the Lie
Zi describes an account of humanoid automata, involving a
much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou and a
mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter
proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped
figure of his mechanical 'handiwork' made of leather, wood,
and artificial organs.

The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-
purpose computer designed by English mathematician Charles Babbage. It was
first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a
design for a mechanical calculator. The Analytical Engine incorporated
an arithmetical unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops,
and integrated memory, making it the first Turing-complete design for a
general-purpose computer.
Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to
conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until
100 years later, in the 1940s, that the first general-purpose computers were
actually built.

In 1898, Tesla designed and built a pair of radio controlled
boats. He applied for and was granted patent number
613,809 "Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism
of Moving Vessels or Vehicles" by the US Patent Office for
these boats. The craft were constructed of iron, powered by a
electric battery of his own design, and equipped with a radio-
mechanical receiver that accepted commands from a
wireless transmitter. The boats were equipped with a large
whip antenna, a modular space that could carry a charge,
diving rudders, a prop and electric running lights that could
all be remotely controlled. Tesla demonstrated the vessels to
a shocked crowd in an indoor pool at Madison Square
Garden in New York City.

Teletanks were a series of wireless remotely controlled unmanned
robotic tanks produced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and early
1940s. They saw their first combat use in the Winter war, at the start
of World War II. A teletank is controlled by radio from a control tank at a
distance of 500–1,500 meters, the two constituting a telemechanical group.
Teletanks were equipped with DT machine guns, flamethrowers, smoke
canisters, and sometimes a special 200–700 kg time bomb in an armored
box, dropped by the tank near the enemy's fortifications and used to
destroy bunkers up to four levels below ground.

An industrial robot is defined by ISO as an automatically
controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator
programmable in three or more axes. The field of robotics
may be more practically defined as the study, design and
use of robot systems for manufacturing. Typical
applications of robots include welding, painting, assembly,
pick and place, product inspection, and testing; all
accomplished with high endurance, speed, and precision.

In 1954, Devol applied for patent on Programmed Article Transfer that
introduced the concept of Universal Automation or Unimation. At the suggestion
of Devol's wife, Evelyn, the word "Unimate" was coined to define the product.
When he filed the patent for a programmable method for transferring articles,
he wrote, "the present invention makes available for the first time a more or less
general purpose machine that has universal application to a vast diversity of
applications where cyclic digital control is desired." Devol's patent for the first
digitally operated programmable robotic arm represents the foundation of the
modern robotics industry.

Several early robot designers attempted to craft
artificial limbs for the disabled. The Rancho Arm,
developed at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in
Downey, California, required six joints in order to
simulate human movement. Stanford University
acquired the arm in 1963 where it became one of
the first artificial limbs to be controlled by a
computer.
The Stanford robot arm was designed in
1969 by Victor Scheinman, a Mechanical
Engineering student working in the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL).
This 6 degree of freedom (6-dof) all-electric
mechanical manipulator was one of the
first "robots" designed exclusively for
computer control.

Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series
created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was
originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star
Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a
worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two
sequels, released at three-year intervals. Sixteen years
after the release of the trilogy's final film, the first in a
new prequel trilogy of films was released. The three films
were also released at three-year intervals, with the final
filmreleased on May19, 2005.

The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University was established in 1979 to
conduct basic and applied research in robotics technologies relevant to industrial and
societal tasks. Seeking to combine the practical and the theoretical, the Robotics
Institute has diversified its efforts and approaches to robotics science while retaining
its original goal of realizing the potential of the robotics field.

Mars Pathfinder was an American spacecraft that
landed a base station with roving probe on Mars in
1997. It waas launched on December 4, 1996 and it
landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. It consisted of
a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial
Station, and a lightweight (10.6 kilograms/23
pounds) wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner.

Honda’s Fundamental Technology & Research Centre is
a part of its R&D centre. It is located in Wako, Japan.
Till date its most successful project has been that of the
humanoid-robot, ASIMO

The AIBO is the world’s first robot dog launched by Sony in 1998. AIBO is able to walk, "see" its
environment via camera and recognize spoken commands in Spanish and English. AIBO robotic
pets are considered to be autonomous robots since they are able to learn and mature based on
external stimuli from their owner, their environment and from other AIBOs. Artist Hajime
Sorayama created the initial designs for the AIBO.
The Roomba is an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner sold by iRobot. Under normal operating
conditions, it is able to navigate a living space and its obstacles while vacuuming the floor. The
Roomba was introduced in 2002; as of January 2008, iRobot claims that over 2.5 million units
have been sold. Several updates and new models have since been released that allow the
Roomba to better negotiate obstacles and optimize cleaning. In 2010, Roomba sales went global,
and in February 2011, iRobot CEO Colin Angle stated "We have sold more than 6 million home
robots worldwide."

RoboSapien is a toy-like biomorphic robot designed
by Mark Tilden and produced by WowWee toys. It was
released in 2003. The RoboSapien is preprogrammed
with moves, and also can be controlled by an infrared
remote control included with the toy, or by either
a personal computer equipped with an infrared
transmitter, and an infrared transmitter-
equipped PDA. The toy's remote control unit has a total
of 21 different buttons. With the help of two shift
buttons, a total of 67 different robot-executable
commands are accessible.

The Advanced Step in Innovative MObility (ASIMO) is a humanoid
robot created by Honda. Standing at 120 centimeters and weighing 52
kilograms, the robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack
and can walk or run on two feet at speeds up to 6 km/h. ASIMO was
created at Honda's Research & Development Wako Fundamental
Technical Research Center in Japan in 2000.

Big Dog is a dynamically stable quadruped robot created in 2005 by Boston
Dynamics with Foster-Miller, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and
the Harvard University Concord Field Station. Big Dog is 3 feet (0.91 m) long,
stands 2.5 feet (0.76 m) tall, and weighs 240 pounds (110 kg), about the size of a
small mule. It is capable of traversing difficult terrain at 5 miles per hour
(8.0 km/h), carrying 340 pounds (150 kg), and climbing a 35 degree incline.
Locomotion is controlled by an onboard computer that receives input from the
robot's various sensors. Navigation and balance are also managed by the control
system.
A self-replicating machine is an artificial construct that is theoretically capable of autonomously
manufacturing a copy of itself using raw materials taken from its environment, thus exhibiting self-
replication in a way analogous to that found in nature. The concept of self-replicating machines
has been advanced and examined by Homer Jacobsen, Edward F. Moore, Freeman Dyson, John
von Neumann and in more recent times by K. Eric Drexler in his book
on nanotechnology, Engines of Creation and by Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle in their
review Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

Pleo is an animatronic pet dinosaur toy designed to
emulate the appearance and behavior of a week-old
baby Camarasaurus. It was designed by Caleb Chung.
Pleo was unveiled on February 7, 2006 at the DEMO
Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona and was expected to
come on the Indian and American markets around Fall
2007. Pleo shipments started on December 5, 2007. Pleo
is now owned by Innvo Labs Corporations.
KeepON is a small yellow robot designed to study social development by interacting with
children. KeepON was developed by Hideki Kozima while at the National Institute of
Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Kyoto, Japan. KeepON has four
motors, a rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose.

Scooba is an automated robotic floor washer produced by iRobot. It was
released in limited numbers in December 2005 for the Christmas season
with full production starting in early 2006. The Scooba uses either a
special non-bleach cleaning solution nicknamed "Scooba juice" that cleans
the floors and prevents rust or skidding, or the newer Scooba Natural
Enzyme cleaning solution. The robot prepares the floor by vacuuming
loose debris, squirts clean solution, scrubs the floor, and then sucks up
the dirty solution leaving a nearly dry floor behind. The robot is safe to
use on sealed hardwood floors and most other hard household surfaces,
but it cannot be used on rugs.

A robotic competition is an event where robots have to accomplish a given task.
Usually they have to beat other robots in order to become the best one. Most
competitions are for schools but as time goes by, several professional competitions
are arising. RoboCup is a competitive organization dedicated to developing a team
of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human
world soccer champion team by the year 2050. There are many different leagues
ranging from computer simulation, to full-size humanoid robots.

The Global Hawk is a robotic plane that can fly autonomously to altitudes above 60,000
feet -- twice as high as a commercial airliner -- and as far as 11,000 nautical miles -- half
the circumference of Earth. Operators pre-program a flight path, and then the plane flies
itself for as long as 30 hours, staying in contact through satellite and line-of-sight
communications to the ground control station at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in
California's Mojave Desert.
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator Drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used
primarily by the United States Air Force (USAF) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Initially conceived in the early 1990s for reconnaissance and forward observation roles, the
Predator carries cameras and other sensors but has been modified and upgraded to carry
and fire two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or other munitions. The aircraft, in use since 1995, has
seen combat over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.

A software error, combined with an unfortunate
user action, led to a US military robot helicopter -
developed from a manned version and capable of
carrying a fearsome arsenal of weapons - straying
into restricted airspace near Washington DC.

In household purposes robots can be used to scrub the floors and washrooms
like Scooba & Roomba and as automatic dishwashers. They can be used as
pets like AIBO and to serve the guests for ASIMO can do so.
The use of robotics in the industrial sector creates a chance for high accuracy
in the manufacturing of products. The number of robots used in this sector has
crossed over 1,00,00,000.
There are many robots performing complex surgeries. When they perform
any surgery the patient doesn’t have to fear the spread of any disease and
early diagnosis is possible.

•On land, robots can be used for logistics, rescue operations, on-field
surgeries, bomb & mine disposal, reconnaissance, as sentries, to provide
artillery in mid-battle and to act as snipers
•In air, robots can be used as decoys, for combat (UCAV), for logistics and for
reconnaissance.
•Underwater, robots such as Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) can be
used for mine warfare and Battlespace Preparation Autonomous Underwater
Vehicles (BPAUVs) can be used for mapping the ocean bottom near the shore,
detecting changes in inshore conditions, and hunting down mines.
•Human casualties are reduced and medical help can be given on-field.

•The use of Autonomous Weaponary System (AWS)
by the robots can backfire because of the artificial
intelligence and autonomy provided to it.
•The manufacturing of robots are highly expensive.
•The responsibility of robotic crime wars is of the
inventor and programmer and not of the robots
involved.
•Robots have limited capabilities.

Swarm robotics is a new approach to the coordination of multirobot
systems which consist of large numbers of mostly simple
physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective
behaviour emerges from the interactions between the robots and
interactions of robots with the environment. This approach emerged
on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological
studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm
behaviour occurs.

Space robotics is the development of general purpose
machines that are capable of surviving the rigors of the
space environment, and performing exploration, assembly,
construction, maintenance, servicing or other tasks that
may or may not have been fully understood at the time of
the design of the robot. Humans control space robots from
either a “local” control console or remotely controlled from
human operators on Earth.
Clever Space RobotNanorover 3

Robotics and Technology

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Robotics and Technology