A robot is an automatic mechanical device often resembling a human or animal.

Modern robots are

usually an electro-mechanical machine guided by a computer program or electronic circuitry.
The branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, and application of
robots,[2] as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing
is robotics
Robots have replaced humans[4] in the assistance of performing those repetitive and dangerous
tasks which humans prefer not to do, or are unable to do due to size limitations, or even those such
as in outer space or at the bottom of the sea where humans could not survive the extreme
environments.

More than a million industrial robots are now in use, nearly half of them in Japan.
There are concerns about the increasing use of robots and their role in society. Robots are blamed
for rising unemployment as they replace workers in increasing numbers of functions. [5] The use of
robots in military combat raises ethical concerns. The possibilities of robot autonomy and potential
repercussions have been addressed in fiction and may be a realistic concern in the future.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a robot is "any automatically operated machine that
replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform
functions in a humanlike manner.

Industrial robots,service robots,domestic robots,educational,

modular,collabrative, military

All organisms, dead or alive, are potential food sources for other organisms. A caterpillar eats a leaf, a
robin eats the caterpillar, a hawk eats the robin. Eventually, the tree and the hawk also die and are
consumed by decomposers.
Organisms in an ecological community are related to each other through their dependence on other
organisms for food. In a food chain a producer is eaten by a herbivore that is in turn eaten by a carnivore.
Eventually, the carnivore dies and is eaten by a decomposer. For example, in a lake, phytoplankton are
eaten by zooplankton and zooplankton are eaten by small fish. The small fish are eaten by large fish. The
large fish eventually die and decompose. Nothing goes to waste. Food chains are channels for the
oneway flow of solar energy captured by photosynthesis through the living components of ecosystems. c
he perfectly linear relations represented by food chains are almost never found in natural ecosystems.
Although all organisms have somewhat specialized diets, most can eat a variety of different foods. Thus,
each trophic level appears as part of several different interconnected food chains. These food chains
combine into highly complex food webs.

As with food chains, a food web's source of energy is the sun. The solar energy is harvested by producers
such as green plants or algae. These producers are known as autotrophs or photosynthesizing
autotrophs. Almost all other organisms obtain their energy, directly or indirectly, from the sun. The
exceptions are the communities found around deep ocean thermal vents, which are supported by various
bacteria that convert heat energy into stored chemical energy. These bacteria are known as chemotrophs
or chemosynthetic autotrophs.
Autotrophs are always found at the first trophic level. In an ecosystem this trophic level may include
monerans, protists, and several different phyla of plants. They can all be placed at the first trophic level
because they all have the same source of energy, and the entire food web depends on the energy
harvested by them. For example, in a grazing food web, a herbivore eats living plant tissue and is eaten in
turn by an array of carnivores and omnivores. Herbivores and the carnivores that prey on them are known
as heterotrophs. In contrast, a detrivore (also a heterotroph) harvests energy from dead organic material
and provides energy for a separate food chain.
Each step in a food web or food chain involves a transfer of matter and energy (in the form of chemical
bonds stored in food) from organism to organism. Thus food webs are energy webs because the
relationships represented by connections in the web represent the flow of energy from a group of
organisms at one trophic level to another group of organisms at a different level. Because energy is lost
(as waste heat) at each step, food chains rarely involve more than four or five steps or trophic levels.
At each level the organisms waste much energy in the form of heat generated by normal activity. Only a
fraction is stored as food or used for growth. Only about 10 percent of the food entering a link is available
for the next organism in the chain. After about five links, there is insufficient energy to support a
population of organisms (other than decomposers). For example, in the food chain starting with diatoms
and ending with killer whales, only about 0.01 percent of the initial energy stored by the diatoms is
delivered to the killer whales.
Energy flow through a food web depends greatly on the nature of the producers at the first trophic level.
These are usually photosynthetic plants, phytoplankton, or algae. In forest ecosystems, trees are the
largest and most abundant organism. They determine the physical structure of the ecosystem, and they
can be eaten directly by small or even very large animals. However, much of the matter and energy
harvested by the trees goes to build a supporting structure. These supporting structures are composed of
cellulose and other wood fibers that are poor sources of energy (although they may be good sources of
valuable minerals and other nutrients).
In contrast, grasses do not invest much energy in supporting structures, so more energy is available per
kilogram of plant material present to the grazers that obtain energy from plants. Consequently, all of the
aboveground parts of the grass plants are eaten by herbivores.
Energy spreads out through the food web, from the lowest trophic level to the highest. At the "top of the
food chain," large carnivores harvest the remaining energy. However, all things eventually die, no matter
where they are in the food web, and the dead organic matter accumulates in the soil, lake bottom, or
forest floor. This detritus becomes the basis for a completely different ecosystem, the detritus food web.
Detritus feeders and decomposers harvest solar energy from the detritus by breaking down the organic
material into simpler organic compounds and inorganic compounds. By this process, the matter is
recycled and made available for reuse by plants. The detritus food web is vitally important to all
ecosystems on Earth. Without it, dead organic matter would accumulate and bury everything.

Humans are omnivores. They can operate on several trophic levels, eating plants, insects, mammals,
birds, fish, mollusks, and many other organisms. Humans can also shorten the food chain when
resources are scarce. In areas of the world where the population may be straining resources, people
commonly increase the total food supply by eliminating one or more steps in the food chain. For example,
to obtain more energy humans can switch from eating herbivores that obtain their energy from cereal
grains to eating the cereal grains themselves.
The food web does not tell us everything there is to know about the complex biological communities
called ecosystems. Not all relationships are equally important in these dynamic, evolving communities.
Food webs contain both strong and weak links. Weak links can often be broken with little impact on the
community. On the other hand, some species have a disproportionately large effect on the community in
which they occur. Called key-stone species, they help to maintain diversity by controlling populations of
species that would otherwise come to dominate the community. Or they may provide critical resources for
a wide range of species.