Physics : November 2015

Robotics

By definition a robot is a machine to accomplish a task. Robots are everywhere from building cars, to sweeping the floor to even helping repair the International Space Station. These robots are helping humans in other ways such as manufacturing. Before robots, humans did everything by hand and by manual labor. But these robots do not have limits. They do not feel tired, lazy or wanting to quit. They make production faster and more efficient. Furthermore, robots are taking the place of humans is hostile environments and becoming more reliable in most situations than humans do. Although we as humans have not created real artificial intelligence, we have developed basic movements and ideas to start our robotic revolution.

The History of Robotics

The history of robotics dates back to the ancient Greeks and their mythology. The God Hephaestus, (God of fire and metal works) has told the tale of creating mechanical servants in which moved on their own power. They were ranged between tables to golden handmaidens.

Heron Of Alexandria

Next, a engineer named Heron or hero of Alexandria created two texts called pneumatic and automate, these texts went over the ideas of hydraulics pressure, air and steam, and ideas such as opening and closing doors and statues that pour wine. Along with those readings, more texts include Belopoeica and Mechanica. These books go over war machines and how to move heavy objects. The idea of these machines and conceptions are way ahead of their time. War machines and automatic doors did not come out till a very long time.
Then after Heron came Leonardo da Vinci who came up with the idea of a mechanical knight which can move. He created drawings and sketches of this idea but no one has found evidence of him attempting to make it.
Then in 1737, a french engineer named Jacques de Vuacanson created the first ever humanoid robot that can play the tabor and pipe. To add, he also created a fully mechanical duck in which can eat, flap it wings and even defecate.
Soon enough in 1937 and 1938, the company, Westinghouse, had created 8 humanoid robots called Elektro which can walk, smoke cigarettes and move its arms and head.
These robots are the start of a mass production and revolution of robots to help the world and humans.

Types of Robots

Industrial Robots

Manufacturing assemblies were always run by humans. Manual labor can create humans to become tired and bored. Robots don't have these emotions like we do and because of this, robots are taking over the world in manufactured goods and in the work area. With these robots, they are more dependable for a long time without pay. Although they cost a lot to purchase these robots and program them, they are much more efficient than manual workers who may not get the job done, take payments to the week or month, are very slow and may not create the best, most exact work that robots do. Robots also can make products better. Things like car manufacturing. Before, cars were put together by hand in the assembly lines. But now robots can put cars together faster and more efficient than ever before. For these reasons, robots are in the need much more than ever before.

Humanoid Robots

Now that in the 21st century, humans have tried to create a humanoid robots to resemble humans and to do human acts. But to do that, robots need to be programmed very well. But to do that is extremely difficult. The reasoning to build these humanoid robots is to replace human tasks. The future will be based off of robots doing the hard work. For example, people are trying to build robots that will act as first respondents to tasks such as firefighters. This replacement of work can save many lives in the act of life or death situations and events. So this group in MIT built HERMES. This robot can go into a building on fire and a person telling the robot what to do feels and sees everything HERMES does. This robot can save the lives of humans, chop/break wood, and grip things like humans do.


Valkyrie has many human aspects, classifying it a humanoid robot

Along with HERMES, there is Valkyrie. This robot is a humanoid robot that was designed to be in space. NASA has funded this program to compete in the DARPA Robotics challenge. The challenge to prove the robot could do simple tasks in space, but on Earth. The tasks are to be:

Exit a habitat airlock hatch and use a ladder to reach the terrestrial land

Remove a communications/power cable from a soft-goods storage location and attach it to a connector located at least 10 meters away, while traversing a irregular rocky terrain, like the surface of Mars.

Repair or replace damaged components on complex equipment, such as a broken valve or damaged tire on a planetary rover

Collect or recover desired samples or items, such as Mars soil and/or rocks

Non- Humanoid Robots

But with humanoid robots, there are also things such as drones. Right now there are robots in which deliver your amazon packages. They could be in flight or on the ground. The more present drone by amazon is the amazon prime air. This drone can take your package and send it to your door by robot and in flight. These robots can get deliveries sent faster and more conveniently to you. At first, humans delivered this packages to your door. They may take weeks to ship to your house. But with these, they send them ASAP right to your door faster than before. But next on the ground, amazon has ideas for new transportation of packages with the trans-wheel robots. These robots balance on one wheel and bring your package straight to you. What makes this type of robot better is that they also travel faster and more convenient then the every day mail man. To add, these robots can travel alone or with more to carry heavier loads. But due to Federal Aviation Administration, they may not allow these types of not man driven robots to roam the streets. But if it passes these robots could change the way delivery works.

Military Robots

Because robots are made to make human lives easier, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has created exoskeletons for soldiers to help carry their load. These machines help reduce muscle tears from the usual weight of the packs they carry. Although, so far it doesn't lighten the load, it mostly helps medically then performance. Before, many soldiers suffer from muscular scoliosis and fatigue. Now these robots can start a new path to more upgraded soldiers weaponry, defense, or transportation. This exoskeleton is one step into the future of military robotics.

Programming

Robots to preform task/ carry out task, they must be programmed to do so. We are not so far into the future where the robots know what to do if we told them. We need to specifically tell them what to do and how to do it based off a computer. Programming is basically the written out code to complete certain tasks without the need of humans. When programming a robot, humans specifically say and write the motions of these robots exactly the way shown to complete the task.
The problem about robots is the robot is always guessing about the real world. The robot does not have eyes and a brain to tell what an object is or where something is. It guesses what the world is like based on measurements from sensors. Upon building a robot, you must create a model which will give the robot the simulation of life. As the world goes as the model goes, the robot will function and make decisions correctly. But as the robots in their field are so perfect in the lab, it may not function correctly in the field. This is due to their model being so specific and narrow only working in certain conditions. Once put outside of the lab, the model will not work and their decision making will not be right. This is the reason robotics is so difficult. So in the future, robots need to be able to be flexible and make decisions on the spot without interaction with humans. Once that happens, robots will be revolutionary and unstoppable.

There are different types of robot programming such as:
joint co-ordinates- This tells the robot basic movements of arms or any joint
Global co-ordinates- This tells the robot basic movements in the planes x,y, and z. Also rotations can be preformed
Tool co-ordinates- This, similar to the global, this moves on one tool center point

Like humans, robots need a goal in their "life". They must have a reason for life. They are just like humans in the work area. Robots need to be able to make decisions without being programmed like at work something happens, they need to be able to do something about it not being mindlessly breaking things and objects.
The goal for programming robotics is to get the point where robots can learn from their own mistakes/experiences. But to do this is very difficult. They would have many many lines of code and artificial intelligence to do this. But predicted by many scientist, robots will be smart enough to do that by 2045. In conclusion, robots through history to now has progressed from simple tasked robots to human robots and soon enough robots with their own mind around the world that can revolutionize the world or become the end of humans.