What
is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a robot?
For
many people it is a machine that
imitates a human—like the androids in Star Wars, Terminator and
Star
Trek: The Next Generation. However much these robots capture our
imagination,
such robots still only inhabit Science Fiction. People still
haven't been
able to give a robot enough 'common sense' to reliably interact
with a dynamic
world. However, Rodney
Brooks and his team at MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab are
working on
creating such humanoid robots.
The
type of robots that you will encounter most frequently are robots
that do
work that is too dangerous, boring, onerous, or just plain nasty.
Most of
the robots in the world are of this type. They can be found in
auto, medical,
manufacturing and space industries. In fact, there are over a
million of
these type of robots working for us today.
Some
robots like the Mars Rover Sojourner
and the upcoming Mars Exploration
Rover, or the underwater robot Caribou
help us learn about places that are too dangerous for us to go.
While other
types of robots are just plain fun for kids of all ages. Popular
toys such
as Teckno, Polly
or AIBO ERS-220 seem to hit the
store
shelves every year around Christmas time.
And
as much fun as robots are to play with, robots are even much more
fun to
build. In Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte tells a wonderful
story about
an eight year old, pressed during a televised premier of MITMedia
Lab's
LEGO/Logo work at Hennigan School. A zealous anchor, looking for a
cute
sound bite, kept asking the child if he was having fun playing
with LEGO/Logo.
Clearly exasperated, but not wishing to offend, the child first
tried to
put her off. After her third attempt to get him to talk about fun,
the child,
sweating under the hot television lights, plaintively looked into
the camera
and answered, "Yes it is fun, but it's hard fun."
But
what exactly is a robot?
As
strange as it might seem, there really is no standard definition
for a robot.
However, there are some essential characteristics that a robot
must have
and this might help you to decide what is and what is not a robot.
It will
also help you to decide what features you will need to build into a
machine
before it can count as a robot.
A
robot has these essential characteristics:
- Sensing
First of all your robot would have to be able to sense its
surroundings.
It would do this in ways that are not unsimilar to the way that
you sense
your surroundings. Giving your robot sensors:
light sensors (eyes), touch and pressure sensors (h`nds), chemical
sensors (nose), hearing
and sonar sensors (ears), and taste
sensors (tongue) will give your robot awareness of its
environment.
- Movement
A robot needs to be able to move around its environment. Whether
rolling
on wheels, walking on legs or propelling by thrusters a robot
needs to be
able to move. To count as a robot either the whole robot moves,
like the
Sojourner or just parts of the robot moves, like the Canada Arm.
- Energy
A robot needs to be able to power itself. A robot might be solar
powered,
electrically powered, battery powered. The way your robot gets its
energy
will depend on what your robot needs to do.
- Intelligence
A robot needs some kind of "smarts." This is where programming
enters the pictures. A programmer is the person who gives the
robot its
'smarts.' The robot will have to have some way to receive the
program so
that it knows what it is to do.
So
what is a robot?
Well
it is a system that contains sensors, control systems, manipulators,
power
supplies and software all working together to perform a task.
Designing, building,
programming and testing a robots is a combination of physics,
mechanical engineering,
electrical engineering, structural engineering, mathematics and
computing.
In some cases biology, medicine, chemistry might also be involved. A
study
of robotics means that students are actively engaged with all of
these disciplines
in a deeply problem-posing problem-solving environment.