Robotics - Historical Background, Robots At Work: The Present Day, Movement Of Materials, Hazardous Or Remote Duty Robots
machines capek
Robotics is the science of designing and building machines that can be programmed to perform more than one function traditionally performed by humans. The word robot comes from a play written in 1920 by the Czech author Karel Capek. Capek's R.U.R. (for Rossum's Universal Robots) is the story of an inventor who creates humanlike machines designed to take over many forms of human work.
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The idea of a machine that looks and behaves like a human being goes back at least 2,000 years. According to Greek mythology, Hephaestus, the god of fire, constructed artificial women out of gold. These women were able to walk, talk, and even to think. By the eighteenth century, scientists and inventors had created an impressive array of mechanical figures that looked and acted like humans and oth…
Robots have come to play a widespread and crucial role in many industrial operations today. These robots are almost always of the Jacquard type—with few human features—rather than the Jacquet-Droz, doll-like style. The work that robots do can be classified into three major categories: in the assembly and finishing of products; in the movement of materials and objects; and in the perf…
Many industrial operations involve the lifting and moving of large, heavy objects over and over again. For example, a particular process may require the transfer of steel ingots onto a conveyor belt and then, at some later point, the removal of shaped pieces of steel made from those ingots. One way to perform these operations is with heavy machinery operated by human workers. But another method th…
A common application of robots is for use in places that humans can go only at risk to their own health or safety or that humans can not go at all. Industries where nuclear materials are used often make use of robots so that human workers are not exposed to the dangerous effects of radioactive materials. In one type of machine, a worker sits in a chair and places his or her hands and arms into a p…
In order for a robot to imitate the actions of a human being, it has to be able to perform three fundamental tasks. First, it must be conscious of the world around it, just as humans obtain information about the world from our five senses. Second, the robot must somehow "know" what to do. One way for it to get that knowledge is to have a human prepare a set of instructions that are t…
The humanlike movements that a robot makes as it works can be accomplished with a relatively small number of mechanical systems. One of those systems is known as the rectangular or Cartesian coordinate system. This system consists of a set of components that can move in any one of three directions, all at right angles to each other. Think of a three-dimensional system in which an x-axis and a y-ax…
The component of modern robots that was most commonly missing from their early predecessors was the ability to collect data from the outside world. Humans accomplish this task, of course, by means of our hands, eyes, ears, noses, and tongues. With some important exceptions, robots usually do not need to have the ability to hear, smell, or taste things in the world around them, but they are often r…
Probably the most important development in the history of robotics has been the evolution of the microcomputer. The microcomputer makes it possible to store enormous amounts of information as well as huge processing programs into the brain of a robot. With the aid of a microcomputer, a robot can not only be provided with far more basic programming than had been possible before, but it can also be …
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