By- Sourbh Kumar

ROBOTICS

1920 The idea of a robot is not new. For thousands of years man has been imagining intelligent mechanized devices that perform human-like tasks. He has built automatic toys and mechanisms and imagined robots in drawings, books, plays and science fiction movies.

ROBOTICS

Robotics History

In fact, the term "robot" was first used in 1920 in a play called "R.U.R." Or "Rossum's universal robots" by the Czech writer Karel Capek. The plot was simple: man makes robot then robot kills man! Many movies that followed continued to show robots as harmful, menacing machines.

Where did the word 'robot' come from?

What is the definition of a 'robot'?

"A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks" Robot Institute of America, 1979

The term 'robotics' refers to the study and use of robots. The term was coined and first used by the Russian-born American scientist and writer Isaac Asimov (born Jan. 2, 1920, died Apr. 6, 1992). Asimov wrote prodigiously on a wide variety of subjects. He was best known for his many works of science fiction.

Robotics Terminology

The most famous include I Robot (1950), He also wrote the three “Laws of Robotics for which he is also famous.

Laws of Robotics• Law 1: A robot may not injure

a human being or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

• Law 2: A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with a higher order law

• Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with a higher order law.

More recent movies, however, like the 1977 "star wars", portray robots such as "C3PO" and "R2D2" as man's helpers. "Number five" in the movie "short circuit" and C3PO actually take on a human appearance. These robots,

which are made to look.

human are called "androids".

However, robots of today are not exactly the walking, talking intelligent machines of movies, stories and our dreams. Today, we find most robots working for people in factories, warehouses, and laboratories. In the future, robots may show up in other places: our schools, our homes, even our bodies.

Robots have the potential to change our economy, our health, our standard of living, our knowledge and the world in which we live. As the technology progresses, we are finding new ways to use robots.

Each new use brings new hope and possibilities, but also potential dangers and risks.

• Robots offer specific benefits to workers, industries and countries. If introduced correctly, industrial robots can improve the quality of life by freeing workers from dirty, boring, dangerous and heavy labor.

Benefits of Robots

Many robots for bio-production have been developed in the world and it is predicted that they will be commercialized in the 21st century, since some of them were already commercialized by some companies in Japan and European countries. A tomato and cherry tomato harvesting robot, a cucumber harvesting robot, strawberry harvesting robots, a multi-operation robot to work in grapevine yard, and a chrysanthemum cutting sticking robot.

Robotics for bio-production

The Mars 2003 Rover Project is designed to have two scientific rovers going to Mars in 2003. Each rover will search for evidence of liquid water that may have been present in Mars past. The rovers will be identical to each other, but will land at different regions of Mars.

The Mini-Andros is used by bomb squads across the country to locate and dispose of bombs. About three feet long, the Mini- Andros looks something like a small armoured tank with eight wheels on four "legs" that extend for climbing stairs.

Types of Robots

 

Industrial Robots

 

Mobile Robots

Educational Robots

Domestic Robots

Robots use arms, end effectors (grippers), drive mechanisms, sensors, controllers, gears and motors to perform the human-like functions necessary to perform their jobs

Robot ComponentsParts of a robot

Robot arms come in all shapes and sizes. The arm is the part of the robot that positions the end-effector and sensors to do their pre-programmed business.

Robot Componentsarms

Many (but not all) resemble human arms, and have shoulders, elbows, wrists, even fingers. This gives the robot a lot of ways to position itself in its environment. Each joint is said to give the robot 1 degree of freedom.

Robot ComponentsDegrees of freedom

So, a simple robot arm with 3 degrees of freedom could move in 3 ways: up and down, left and right, forward and backward. Most working robots today have 6 degrees of freedom.

Humans have many more and some robots have 8, 12, or even 20 degrees of freedom, but these 6 are enough for most basic tasks. As a result, most jointed-arm robots in use today have 6 degrees of freedom

Robot Components

X, Y, Z, Tilt and Spin

Are 3 of the degrees of freedom that robots perform. Most arms move according to

Cartesian coordinates

AXIS OF ROTATION

Tilt is the angle between gripper and Z-Axis.

The animation sequence shows the three most important tilting angles +45, 0, and -45 and how tilting enables to tip over a block. 

Robot Componentstilt

Spin is defined as the gripper's rotation around the Z-Axis. You need to choose a spin value to align the jaws of the gripper with a block. Spin 0 aligns the block with the Y-Axis, Spin -45 with the diagonal between Y- and X-Axis.

Robot Componentsspin

ROBOTICS SENSORS & CONTROLLERS

Sensors collect all the information a robot needs to operate and interact with its environment.

What are sensors?

What are Controllers?

Controllers interpret all the input from the sensors and decide how to act in response.

ROBOTICS SENSORS & CONTROLLERS

What are sensors for?

The control of a manipulator or industrial robot is based on the correct interpretation of sensory information. This information can be obtained either internally to the robot (for example, joint positions and motor torque) or externally using a wide range of sensors.

ROBOTICS SENSORS & CONTROLLERS

Since sensors are any device that provide input of data to the robot controller a wide verity of sensors exist. Some basic types of sensors are shown including:

Light sensors which measure light intensity.

Heat Sensors which measure temperature. Touch sensors which tell the robot when it

bumps into something. Ultra Sonic Rangers which tell the robot

how far away objects are. And gyroscopes which tell the robot

which direction is up.

Types of Sensors

Robotics Sensors & controllers

The bumper skirt on this robot is an example of a touch sensor. When the robot runs into a wall the bumper skirt hits a micro switch which lets the robot controller know that the robot is up against a wall. Other types of touch sensors are used internally to let the robot know when an arm is extended to far and it should be retracted or when the robots other physical limits are reached.

Robotics Sensors & controllers

Light sensors are used to detect the presence and Intensity of light. These can be used to make a light seeking robot and are often used to simulate insect intelligence in robots.

Robotics Sensors & controllers

Heat sensors help robots determine if they are in danger of overheating. These sensors are often used internally to make sure that the robot’s electronics do not breakdown.

Robotics Sensors & controllers

Ultra Sonic Rangers are used to determine how far a robot is away from an object. They are often used by robots that need to navigate complicated terrain and cannot risk bumping into anything.

Robotics Sensors & controllers

Gyroscopes are used in robots that need to maintain balance or are not inherently stable. Gyroscopes are often coupled with powerful robot controllers that have the processing power necessary calculate thousands of physical simulations per second.

Robotics Sensors & controllers

Use transistors as a switch to control power to motors, relays and lamps. Current and power handling capability is pretty much dictated by package size. The bigger the package, the more power.

• Transistors

ROBOTICS SENSORS & CONTROLLERS

Basic Stamp IIThe Basic Stamp II is a small, self-contained computer controller manufactured by Parallax Inc. This easy-to-use system is programmed using a Basic-like language called PBasic. Programs are written on an IBM-style PC then downloaded to the Basic Stamp II for execution. Large libraries of programs can be created and saved.

Controllers

Robotics Sensors & controllers

Tiny custom microchips like these give "vision" to a toy car by processing images and telling the vehicle how to respond.

Controls

The Future?

• Although most robots in use today are designed for specific tasks, the goal is to make universal robots, robots flexible enough to do just about anything a human can do.

  Here is an example of some new development on creating robots that walk.

• In the future,

robots may show up in other places: our schools, our homes, even our bodies.

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