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Robotics Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application.[102] Robotics requires a working knowledge of electronics, mechanics, and software. A person working in the field is a roboticist. The word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Runaround". [103] A robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent. It is usually an electromechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own. The word robot can refer to both physical and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots to differentiate.[1] Properties: Is not 'natural' i.e. has been artificially created. Can sense its environment. Can manipulate things in its environment. Has some degree of intelligence, or ability to make choices based on the environment or automatic control / preprogrammed sequence. Is programmable. Can move with one or more axes of rotation or translation. Can make dexterous coordinated movements. Appears to have intent or agency (reification, anthropomorphisation or Pathetic fallacy Cadmus Sowing the Dragon's teeth, by Maxfield Parrish, 1908 Ancient developments The idea of artificial people dates at least as far back as the ancient legends of Cadmus, who sowed dragon teeth that turned into soldiers, and the myth of Pygmalion, whose statue of Galatea came to life. In Greek mythology, the deformed god of metalwork (Vulcan or Hephaestus) created mechanical servants, ranging from intelligent, golden handmaidens to more utilitarian three-legged tables that could move about under their own power. Medieval Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, inventor of many basic processes still used in chemistry today, included recipes for creating artificial snakes, scorpions, and humans in his coded Book of Stones. Jewish legend tells of the Golem, a clay creature animated by Kabbalistic magic. Similarly, in the Younger Edda, Norse mythology tells of a clay giant, Mökkurkálfi or Mistcalf, constructed to aid the troll Hrungnir in a duel with Thor, the God of Thunder. In ancient China, a curious account on automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) 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' (Wade-Giles spelling): The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously colored white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.[15] Concepts akin to a robot can be found as long ago as the 4th century BC, when the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical bird he called "The Pigeon" which was propelled by steam. Yet another early automaton was the clepsydra, made in 250 BC by Ctesibius of Alexandria, a physicist and inventor from Ptolemaic Egypt.[16] Hero of Alexandria (10-70 AD) made numerous innovations in the field of automata, including one that allegedly could speak. Al-Jazari's programmable humanoid robots. [edit] Medieval developments Al-Jazari (1136-1206), an Arab Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty, designed and constructed a number of automatic machines, including kitchen appliances, musical automata powered by water (see one of his works), and the first programmable humanoid robot in 1206. Al-Jazari's robot was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bump into little levers that operate the percussion. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations.[17] One of the first recorded designs of a humanoid robot was made by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in around 1495. Da Vinci's notebooks, rediscovered in the 1950s, contain detailed drawings of a mechanical knight able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. [18] The design is likely to be based on his anatomical research recorded in the Vitruvian Man. It is not known whether he attempted to build the robot (see: Leonardo's robot). [edit] Early modern developments The word robot was introduced by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) premiered in 1920 (see also Robots in literature for details of the play; its robots were biological in nature, corresponding to the modern term android).[18] However, Čapek named his brother Josef Čapek, a painter and a writer, as the true inventor of the word.[19] The word is derived from the noun robota, meaning "forced labour, corvée, drudgery" in the Czech language and being the general root for work in other Slavic languages. (See Karel Čapek#Etymology of robot for more details). An early automaton was created 1738 by Jacques de Vaucanson, who created a mechanical duck that was able to eat and digest grain, flap its wings, and excrete. [18] The Japanese craftsman Hisashige Tanaka, known as "Japan's Edison," created an array of extremely complex mechanical toys, some of which were capable of serving tea, firing arrows drawn from a quiver, or even painting a Japanese kanji character. The landmark text Karakuri Zui (Illustrated Machinery) was published in 1796. (T. N. Hornyak, Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots [New York: Kodansha International, 2006]) [edit] Modern developments Nikola Tesla Some consider the first truly modern robot to be a teleoperated boat, similar to a modern ROV, devised by Nikola Tesla and demonstrated at an 1898 exhibition in Madison Square Garden. Based on his patents U.S. Patent 613,809 , U.S. Patent 723,188  and U.S. Patent 725,605  for "teleautomation", Tesla hoped to develop the "wireless torpedo" into an automated weapon system for the US Navy. (Cheney 1989) Tesla also proposed but did not build remotely operated war planes and ground vehicles. He also predicted these remote controlled machines were merely precursors of "machines possessed of their own intelligence" (Cheney 1989). See also the PBS website article (with photos): Tesla - Master of Lightning: Race of Robots In the 1930s, Westinghouse Electric Corporation made a humanoid robot known as Elektro, exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 World's Fairs. The first electronic autonomous robot was created by William Grey Walter at Bristol University, England in 1948. It was named Elsie, or the Bristol Tortoise. This robot could sense light and contact with external objects, and use these stimuli to navigate. [16] Unimate's PUMA arm. The first truly modern robot, digitally operated, programmable, and teachable, was invented by George Devol and was called the Unimate. It is worth noting that not a single patent was cited against his original robotics patent (U.S. Patent 2,988,237 ). The first Unimate was personally sold by Devol to General Motors in 1960 and installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine and stack them.[16] The first human to be killed by a robot was Robert Williams who died at a casting plant in Flat Rock, MI (Jan. 25, 1979). [20] A better known case is that of 37 year-old Kenji Urada, a Japanese factory worker, in 1981. Urada was performing routine maintenance on the robot, but neglected to shut it down properly, and was accidentally pushed into a grinding machine.[21 Industrial robots doing vehicle under body assembly Jobs which require speed, accuracy, reliability or endurance can be performed far better by a robot than a human. Hence many jobs in factories which were traditionally performed by people are now robotized. This has lead to cheaper mass-produced goods, including automobiles and electronics. Robots have now been working in factories for more than fifty years, ever since the Unimate robot was installed to automatically remove hot metal from a die casting machine. Since then, factory automation in the form of large stationary manipulators has become the largest market for robots. The number of installed robots has grown faster and faster, and today there are more than 800,000 worldwide (42% in Japan, 40% in the European Union and 18% in the USA).[29] Pick and Place robot, Contact Systems C5 Series[30] Some examples of factory robots: Car production: This is now the primary example of factory automation. Over the last three decades automobile factories have become dominated by robots. A typical factory contains hundreds of industrial robots working on fully automated production lines - one robot for every ten human workers. On an automated production line a vehicle chassis is taken along a conveyor to be welded, glued, painted and finally assembled by a sequence of robot stations. Packaging: Industrial robots are also used extensively for palletising and packaging of manufactured goods, for example taking drink cartons from the end of a conveyor belt and placing them rapidly into boxes, or the loading and unloading of machining centers. Electronics: Mass produced printed circuit boards (PCBs) are almost exclusively manufactured by pick and place robots, typically with "SCARA" manipulators, which remove tiny electronic components from strips or trays, and place them on to PCBs with great accuracy.[31] Such robots can place several components per second (tens of thousands per hour), far out-performing a human in terms of speed, accuracy, and reliability.[32] Automated Guided Vehicles: Large mobile robots, following markers or wires in the floor, or using vision[33] or lasers, are used to transport goods around large facilities, such as warehouses, container ports, or hospitals.[34] Tasks such as these suit robots perfectly because the tasks can be accurately defined and must be performed the same every time. Very little feedback or intelligence is required, and the robots may need only the most basic of exteroceptors to sense things in their environment, if any at all. vComponents of Robots [edit] Actuation A robot leg, powered by Air Muscles. Built by The Shadow Robot Company Ltd. The actuators are the 'muscles' of a robot; the parts which convert stored energy into movement. By far the most popular actuators are electric motors, but there are many others, some of which are powered by electricity, while others use chemicals, or compressed air. Motors: By far the vast majority of robots use electric motors, of which there are several kinds. DC motors, which are familiar to many people, spin rapidly when an electric current is passed through them. They will spin backwards if the current is made to flow in the other direction. Stepper Motors: As the name suggests, stepper motors don't spin freely like DC motors, they rotate in steps of a few degrees at a time, under the command of a controller. This makes them easier to control, as the controller knows exactly how far they have rotated, without having to use a sensor. Therefore they are used on many robots and CNC machining centres. Piezo Motors: An recent alternative to DC motors are piezo motors, also known as ultrasonic motors. These work on a fundamentally different principle, whereby tiny piezoceramic legs, vibrating many thousands of times per second, walk the motor round in a circle or a straight line.[48] The advantages of these motors are incredible nanometre resolution, speed and available force for their size.[49] These motors are already available commercially, and being used on some robots.[50][51] Air Muscles: The air muscle is a simple yet powerful device for providing a pulling force. When inflated with compressed air, it contracts by up to 40% of its original length. The key to its behaviour is the braiding visible around the outside, which forces the muscle to be either long and thin, or short and fat. Since it behaves in a very similar way to a biological muscle, it can be used to construct robots with a similar muscle/skeleton system to an animal.[52] For example, the Shadow robot hand uses 40 air muscles to power its 24 joints. Electroactive Polymers: These are a class of plastics which change shape in response to electrical stimulation.[53] They can be designed so that they bend, stretch or contract, but so far there are no EAPs suitable for commercial robots, as they tend to have low efficiency or are not robust.[54] Indeed, all of the entrants in a recent competition to build EAP powered arm wrestling robots, were beaten by a 17 year old girl.[55] However, they are expected to improve in the future, where they may be useful for microrobotic applications.[56] [edit] Locomotion [edit] Rolling Robots Segway in the Robot museum in Nagoya. For simplicity, most mobile robots have wheels. However, some researchers have tried to create more complex wheeled robots, with only one or two wheels. Two-wheeled balancing: While the Segway is not commonly thought of as a robot, it can be thought of as a component of a robot. Several real robots do use a similar dynamic balancing algorithm, and NASA's Robonaut has been mounted on a Segway.[57] Ballbot: Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new type of mobile robot that balances on a ball instead of legs or wheels. "Ballbot" is a self-contained, battery-operated, omnidirectional robot that balances dynamically on a single urethane-coated metal sphere. It weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person. Because of its long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people. [58]  [edit] Walking Robots iCub robot, designed by the RobotCub Consortium 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. Typically, these robots can walk well on flat floors, can occasionally walk up stairs. None can walk over rocky, uneven terrain. Some of the methods which have been tried are: Zero Moment Point Technique: is the algorithm used by robots such as Honda's ASIMO. The robot's onboard computer tries to the keep the total inertial forces (the combination of earth's gravity and the acceleration and deceleration of walking), exactly opposed by the floor reaction force (the force of the floor pushing back on the robot's foot). In this way, the two forces cancel out, leaving no moment (force causing the robot to rotate and fall over).[59] However, this is not exactly how a human walks, and the difference is quite apparent to human observers, some of whom have pointed out that ASIMO walks as if it needs the lavatory.[60][61][62] ASIMO's walking algorithm is not static, and some dynamic balancing is used (See below). However, it still requires a smooth surface to walk on. Hopping: Several robots, built in the 1980s by Marc Raibert at the MIT Leg Laboratory, successfully demonstrated very dynamic walking. Initially, a robot with only one leg, and a very small foot, could stay upright simply by hopping. The movement is the same as that of a person on a pogo stick. As the robot falls to one side, it would jump slightly in that direction, in order to catch itself.[63] Soon, the algorithm was generalised to two and four legs. A bipedal robot was demonstrated running and even performing somersaults.[64] A quadruped was also demonstrated which could trot, run, pace and bound.[65] For a full list of these robots, see the MIT Leg Lab Robots page. Dynamic Balancing: A more advanced way for a robot to walk is by using a dynamic balancing algorithm, which is potentially more robust than the Zero Moment Point technique, as it constantly monitors the robot's motion, and places the feet in order to main stability.[66] This technique was recently demonstrated by Anybots' Dexter Robot,[67] which is so stable, it can even jump.[68] Passive Dynamics: Perhaps the most promising approach being taken is to use the momentum of swinging limbs for greater efficiency. It has been shown that totally unpowered humanoid mechanisms can walk down a gentle slope, using only gravity to propel themselves. Using this technique, a robot need only supply a small amount of motor power to walk along a flat surface or a little more to walk up a hill. This technique promises to make walking robots at least ten times more efficient than ZMP walkers, like ASIMO.[69]  [edit] Other methods of locomotion RQ-4 Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. No pilot means no windows. Flying: A modern passenger airliner is essentially a flying robot, with two humans to attend it. The autopilot can control the plane for each stage of the journey, including takeoff, normal flight and even landing.[citation needed] Other flying robots are completely automated, and are known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). They can be smaller and lighter without a human pilot, 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. Other flying robots include cruise missiles, the Entomopter and the Epson micro helicopter robot. Two robot snakes. Left one has 32 motors, the right one 10. Snake: 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.[70] The Japanese ACM-R5 snake robot can even navigate both on land and in water.[71] 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[72]. Another robot, Plen, can use a miniature skateboard or rollerskates, and skate across a desktop.[73] Swimming: It is calculated that some fish can achieve a propulsive efficiency greater than 90%. [74] Furthermore, they can accelerate and manoeuver 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.[75] Notable examples are the Essex University Computer Science Robotic Fish[76], and the Robot Tuna built by the Institute of Field Robotics, to analyse and mathematically model thunniform motion.[77]  [edit] Human Interaction Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions 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 communicate with humans by talking, 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 C3P0. Speech Recognition: Interpreting the continuous flow of sounds coming from a human, in real time, is a difficult task for a computer, mostly because of the great variability of speech. The same word, spoken by the same person may sound different depending on local acoustics, volume, the previous word, whether or not the speaker has a cold, etc.. It becomes even harder when the speaker has a different accent.[78] Nevertheless, great strides have been made in the field since Davis, Biddulph, and Balashek designed the first "voice input system" which recognized "ten digits spoken by a single user with 100% accuracy" in 1952.[79] Currently, the best systems can recognise continuous, natural speech, up to 160 words per minute, with an accuracy of 95%.[80] Gestures: One can imagine, in the future, explaining to a robot chef how to make a pastry, or asking directions from a robot police officer. On both of these occasions, making hand gestures would aid the verbal descriptions. In the first case, the robot would be recognising gestures made by the human, and perhaps repeating them for confirmation. In the second case, the robot police officer would gesture to indicate "down the road, then turn right". It is quite likely that gestures will make up a part of the interaction between humans and robots.[81] A great many systems have been developed to recognise human hand gestures.[82] Facial expression: Facial expressions can provide rapid feedback on the progress of a dialog between two humans, and soon it may be able to do the same for humans and robots. A robot should know how to approach a human, judging by their facial expression and body language. Whether the person is happy, frightened or crazy-looking affects the type of interaction expected of the robot. Likewise, a robot like Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions, allowing it to have meaningful social exchanges with humans.[83] Personality: Many of the robots of science fiction have personality, and that is something which may or may not be desirable in the commercial robots of the future.[84] Nevertheless, researchers are trying to create robots which appear to have a personality[85][86]: i.e. they use sounds, facial expressions and body language to try to convey an internal state, which may be joy, sadness or fear. One commercial example is Pleo, a toy robot dinosaur, which can exhibit several apparent emotions.[87] [edit] Unusual Robots Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robot, alternative ways to think about or design robots, and new ways to manufacture them. It is expected that these new types of robot will be able to solve real world problems when they are finally realised. A nanocar made from a single molecule[88] Nanorobots: Nanorobotics is the still largely hypothetical technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometre (10-9 metres). Also known as nanobots or nanites, they would be constructed from nanoscale or molecular components. So far, researchers have only been able to produce some parts of such a machine, such as bearings, sensors, and Synthetic molecular motors, but they hope to be able to create entire robots as small as viruses or bacteria, which could perform tasks on a tiny scale. Possible applications include micro surgery (on the level of individual cells), utility fog[89], manufacturing, weaponry and cleaning.[90] Some prople have suggested that if nanobots were made which could reproduce, they could have serious negative concequences, turning the earth into grey goo, while others argue[91] that this is nonsense.[92] Soft Robots: Most robots, indeed most man made machines of any kind, are made from hard, stiff materials; especially metal and plastic. This is in contrast to most natural organisms, which are mostly soft tissues. This difference has not been lost on robotic engineers, and some are trying to create robots from soft materials (rubber, foam, gel), soft actuators (air muscles, electroactive polymers, ferrofluids), and exhibiting soft behaviours (fuzzy logic, neural networks).[93] Such robots are expected to look, feel, and behave differently from traditional hard robots. Molecubes in motion Reconfigurable Robots: A few researchers have investigated the possibility of creating robots which can alter their physical form to suit a particular task,[94] like the fictional T-1000. Real robots are nowhere near that sophisticated however, and mostly consist of a small number of cube shaped units, which can move relative to their neighbours, for example Superbot. Algorithms have been designed in case any such robots become a reality.[95] A swarm of robots from the Open-source micro-robotic project Swarm robots: Inspired by colonies of insects such as ants and bees, researchers hope to create very large swarms (thousands) of tiny robots which together perform a useful task, such as finding something hidden, cleaning, or spying. Each robot would be quite simple, but the emergent behaviour of the swarm would be more complex.[96] The whole set of robots can be considered as one single distributed system, in the same way an ant colony can be considered a superorganism. They would exhibit swarm intelligence. The largest swarms so far created include the iRobot swarm, and the Open-source micro-robotic project swarm, which are being used to research collective behaviours.[97] Swarms are also more resistant to failure. Whereas one large robot may fail and ruin the whole mission, the swarm can continue even if several robots fail. This makes them attractive for space exploration missions, where failure can be extremely costly.[98] Evolutionary Robots: is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to help design robots, especially the body form, or motion and behaviour 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 behaviours 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,[99] and to explore the nature of evolution.[100] Although the appearance and capabilities of robots vary vastly, all robots share the features of a mechanical, movable structure under some form of control. The structure of a robot is usually mostly mechanical and can be called a kinematic chain (its functionality being akin to the skeleton of a body). The chain is formed of links (its bones), actuators (its muscles) and joints which can allow one or more degrees of freedom. Most contemporary robots use open serial chains in which each link connects the one before to the one after it. These robots are called serial robots and often resemble the human arm. Some robots, such as the Stewart platform, use closed parallel kinematic chains. Other structures, such as those that mimic the mechanical structure of humans, various animals and insects, are comparatively rare. However, the development and use of such structures in robots is an active area of research (e.g. biomechanics). Robots used as manipulators have an end effector mounted on the last link. This end effector can be anything from a welding device to a mechanical hand used to manipulate the environment. The mechanical structure of a robot must be controlled to perform tasks. The control of a robot involves three distinct phases - perception, processing and action (robotic paradigms). Sensors give information about the environment or the robot itself (e.g. the position of its joints or its end effector). Using strategies from the field of control theory, this information is processed to calculate the appropriate signals to the actuators (motors) which move the mechanical structure. The control of a robot involves various aspects such as path planning, pattern recognition, obstacle avoidance, etc. More complex and adaptable control strategies can be referred to as artificial intelligence. Any task involves the motion of the robot. The study of motion can be divided into kinematics and dynamics. Direct kinematics refers to the calculation of end effector position, orientation, velocity and acceleration when the corresponding joint values are known. Inverse kinematics refers to the opposite case in which required joint values are calculated for given end effector values, as done in path planning. Some special aspects of kinematics include handling of redundancy (different possibilities of performing the same movement), collision avoidance and singularity avoidance. Once all relevant positions, velocities and accelerations have been calculated using kinematics, methods from the field of dynamics are used to study the effect of forces upon these movements. Direct dynamics refers to the calculation of accelerations in the robot once the applied forces are known. Direct dynamics is used in computer simulations of the robot. Inverse dynamics refers to the calculation of the actuator forces necessary to create a prescribed end effector acceleration. This information can be used to improve the control algorithms of a robot. In each area mentioned above, researchers strive to develop new concepts and strategies, improve existing ones and improve the interaction between these areas. To do this, criteria for "optimal" performance and ways to optimize design, structure and control of robots must be developed and implemented. So your first robot will have 2 wheels. It will drive under the most basic algorithm for a robot - differential drive. to drive straight both wheels move forward at same speed to drive reverse both wheels move back at same speed to turn left the left wheel moves in reverse and the right wheel moves forward to turn right the right wheel moves in reverse and the left wheel moves forward Let's start with the wheels. Big wheels will let your robot move faster. Small wheels for slower. So why not just get big? Bigger wheels means your robot has less torque to carry a heavy payload, and bigger wheels generally mean fine position control is harder too. Also, your sensors often cannot keep up with fast changes in position. But then again, slow robots that take forever to commit suicide (such as ramming into a wall) are boring, so its a design tradeoff for you to decide. I recommend 2-3" diameter wheel for your first robot. Visit hobby aircraft websites or our robot parts list to find good wheels with traction. Expect to spend from $5-$10 plus shipping. Don't forget to consider how to attach your wheels to your motors. v