Robotics

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Robotics is the study of how to design, build, use, and work with robots. Although there is no consensus regarding the definition of the term robot, it is commonly defined as a mechanism that can sense its environment, process what it senses, and act upon its environment based on that processing.

Automatons—mechanisms that perform predefined tasks with some degree of autonomy —are the early predecessors of robots and have existed for more than 1,000 years. In the ninth century, the Chinese built a statue of Buddha surrounded by steam-powered servants that would move in a circle around the central figure. In the eighteenth century, the French constructed small mechanical "scribes" that, when powered by hand, could write up to forty pre-set characters using an attached writing implement. In the nineteenth century, automatons gave way to automation. In 1801 Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1754–1834), a French inventor, designed and built a loom that used a set of punched cards with which the user could produce complex tapestries simply by pushing a pedal.

Grey Walters, a British scientist, built devices in the 1940s that moved toward lights and retreated from contact. Between 1961 and 1963, Johns Hopkins University staff built the "Hopkins Beast" that wandered the halls, stayed away from walls, and plugged itself in for recharging. All of these mechanisms are considered automatons rather than robots because they responded to stimuli without processing them first.

The devices now called robots developed from the work of scientists in three separate fields of engineering: teleoperation, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence (AI).

American inventor George C. Devol Jr. filed a patent in 1954 for a playback device for controlling machines. Devol's work grew from, among other things, Teleoperation, which began in the 1930s to handle nuclear materials. In 1958 Devol and Joseph Engelberger, an American entrepreneur, filed a patent for the first programmable manipulator (robot arm). The Unimation Corporation was formed in 1961 to put such devices into production. Engelberger's vision was to outfit assembly lines, such as those in automobile factories, with robot manipulators to automate the heavy lifting and assembly of large parts. General Motors (GM) installed the first industrial robot, made by Unimation, on a production line in 1962.

Also in the 1960s, scientists at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) studied artificial intelligence on computers. They wanted to make their work more interesting and applicable to the real world, so the team built Shakey, the first mobile robot, in 1969. Shakey had a camera, a range finder, and bump sensors that allowed it to detect obstacles.

Since the first Unimation robot, the scope and complexity of industrial tasks carried out by robots has steadily increased. Modern automotive factories use robots for assembly, welding, painting, and quality control. Innovation in the Mobile Robotics community has led to the creation of industrial robots that can autonomously harvest grain, mow lawns, and clean spacecraft.

The field of Medical Robotics has adapted and expanded many of the techniques created for robot arms into tools for doctors. A hip replacement, which traditionally requires a 30-centimeter (11.7-inch) incision, can be done with an 8-centimeter (3.1-inch) incision using robotic assistance. These improvements lead to shorter recovery periods for patients and reduce the chance of infection. Robotics allows a doctor to spend less time on standard procedures, and more time on difficult cases and unexpected complications.

Robots are also particularly useful for exploring and working in hazardous environments. Robotic rovers travel to other planets and send back information to scientists. There are robots that clean oil and gasoline tanks, and robots that remove asbestos from underground pipes. The U.S. military is putting a substantial amount of effort into developing robot scouts, advance teams, and tools to save the lives of military personnel in both offensive and defensive situations.

In the transportation field, robots are quickly gaining ground, though the mechanisms are rarely called robots. By 2000, there were automobiles that could autonomously maintain a safe distance behind other cars. Modern airplanes can take off, fly, and land without assistance from the pilot, and are therefore robots by most definitions. The near future will bring cars that do not need drivers, trains that do not need conductors, and planes that do not need pilots. Robotics and robot technologies are also widely used in amusement parks, movies, and toys.

Even more varied than the consumer and business applications of robotics are the academic disciplines that have been created to advance the state of the art. Robotics is characterized by a synergy between very practical applications and cutting-edge research. Broadly, while industry focuses on finding robotic ways of doing existing tasks, research focuses on extending the fundamental abilities of robots. This division is not a strict rule, however; many research labs produce usable robots, and industrial development routinely improves basic robotic technology. All areas of robotics are studied, to varying degrees, in academic, governmental, and industrial research laboratories.

In the 1940s, as the mechanisms being controlled in Teleoperation became more complex, Telerobotics, the study of remotely operated robots, was born. As Engelberger created and popularized robots in factories, researchers created the field of Manipulation, or the study of the physics and control of those machines. Mobile Robotics studies techniques for enabling robots to move through their environments. There are wheeled robots, legged robots, and treaded robots. There are robots with one, two, four, six, or more legs, and robots with combinations of treads, wheels, and legs. Medical Robotics, Space Robotics, and Industrial Robotics, among others, are also significant fields of scientific research and study.

Robotics also enhances the work of scientists in other fields. Telerobotics has enabled scientists to study the centers of volcanoes. Mobile Robotics has allowed scientists to find meteors in the Antarctic remotely and to explore the surface and atmosphere of Mars.

All fields of robotics are interdependent, as well as dependent on other engineering and science disciplines. Computer vision and sensor technology allow robots to sense their environments. Advances in artificial intelligence have led to robots with greater abilities to understand their environments, while robotics provides artificial intelligence with the physical capacity to interact with the environment. Of course, these relationships are only two examples. Fundamentally, robotics is the science of innovation by integrating and extending other technologies.

When Jacquard introduced his mechanized loom, there were rebellions in Paris. Weavers were afraid that they would be run out of business. When robots are installed in automobile factories, managers rejoice, but workers are concerned that they will be replaced by machines and be out of work.

Robots are labor-saving devices, and, by definition, labor-saving devices result in lower human labor requirements. Although robots cannot replace humans in many ways, there are already hundreds of jobs that have been made easier or eliminated by robots. Throughout history, questions have been raised about the effects of automation on the workforce. There is no consensus on what exactly that effect is. This remains an ongoing debate in the robotic and industrial communities.

One thing that robots will not do any time in the near future is replace humans. Although robots can move and make decisions, and seem to haveemotions, robots are not self-aware. That is, they cannot think about their own existence. Scientists and philosophers have also argued that robots do not have a "consciousness" or that they lack a "soul."

Scientists disagree on how long it will be before robots are capable of operating without human assistance or are mistaken for humans. Some scientists, and many philosophers, assert that both tasks are impossible. Other scientists speculate that robots will be able to replace humans by 2030. Most scientists believe that it will take more than a hundred years, perhaps several hundred, before robots are even self-sufficient.

The idea of the robot dates back almost as far as the written word. Homer (9th or 8th century B.C.E.), in the "Iliad," describes Haephestus, the Greek god of the forge, as having golden maid servants that "look like young girls who could speak and walk and were filled with intelligence and wisdom." Early twentieth-century Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890–1938) invented the word robot in his 1921 play, Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.).In that work, Rossum's Universal Robots were beings that looked and acted just like human beings and were invented to serve people. Unlike the robots we think of today, these devices were made of biological parts, but like the modern idea of robots, they were built by people to do things for people.

Between 1921 and 1940, robots made many appearances in books, stories, movies, and plays. Although some of the robots in these fictional accounts were designed to help and serve humans, the majority of them were simply evil, and even the good robots invariably ended up destroying their owner, inventor, or the entire human race. Twentieth-century American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) invented the word "robotics" in "Runaround." In this 1942 short story, he uses the term to describe the study of robots. Asimov's 1950 novel, I, Robot, marked the first piece of writing in which robots were regarded as ultimately non-destructive, and also proposed the "three laws of robotics" that have been used or mentioned in many works of fiction since then.

Robots have made countless appearances in movies, books, stories, and plays since 1942, and they are now represented as good as often as they are evil. More importantly, the concepts created by science fiction authors continue to motivate the scientists and engineers who design robots, such as the Personal Satellite Assistant, being built by NASA, that was directly inspired by Luke Skywalker's light saber-training robot in Star Wars.

In the mid-twentieth century, when computers were invented, they were easy to recognize. Computers took up entire rooms and used as much power as an entire building. Now, computers are everywhere. There is a computer on your desk, there is a computer in your television, and there is probably a computer in your toaster.

In much the same way, robots started as big machines that were obviously robots. Now, robots have taken on many different forms: automated trams in airports, automatic car washes, and even gas stations that autonomously find your gas tank, open it, and fill it, to name a few. Despite their names and appearances, these mechanisms are, in fact, robots.

As we move to the future, robots will be found everywhere, and robotics will expand to study all of their enabling technologies and their limitless applications.

Salvatore Domenick Desiano

Artificial Intelligence; Asimov, Isaac; Robots.

Asimov, Isaac, and Karen A. Frenkel. Robots: Machines in Man's Image. New York: Harmony Books, 1985.

Kortenkamp, David, R. Peter Bonasso, and Robin Murphy, eds. Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robotics: Case Studies of Successful Robot Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Malone, Robert. The Robot Book. New York, NY: Push Pin Press, 1978.

Moravec, Hans P. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Reichardt, Jasia. Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction. New York: Viking, 1978.

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