RoBoTics Club

IEEE-AiT
Module – 1 (Introduction).

Robots have fascinated people for thousands of years. Those automatons that were built before
the 20th century did not connect sensing to action but rather operated through human agency
or as repetitive machines. However, by the 1920s electronics had gotten to the stage that the
first true robots that sensed the world and acted in it appropriately could be built. By 1950 we
started to see descriptions of real robots appearing in popular magazines. By the 1960s
industrial robots came onto the scene. Commercial pressures made them less and less
responsive to their environments but faster and faster in what they did in their carefully
engineered world. Then in the mid 1970s in France, Japan, and the USA we started to see robots
rising again in a handful of research laboratories, and now we have arrived at a world-wide
frenzy in research and the beginnings of large-scale deployment of intelligent robots
throughout our world.
-Rodney Brooks (Panasonic Professor of Robotics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

The field of robotics was born in the middle of the last century when emerging computers were
altering every field of science and engineering. Having gone through fast yet steady growth via a
procession of stages from infancy, childhood, and adolescence to adulthood, robotics is now
mature and is expected to enhance the quality of people’s lives in society in the future. In its
infancy, the core of robotics consisted of pattern recognition, automatic control, and artificial
intelligence.
-Hirochika Inoue (Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo)
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 RoBoTics Club
IEEE-AiT
Module – 1 (Introduction).

What is a Robot?
A robot is a mechanical device that can perform pre-programmed physical tasks. A robot may
act under the direct control of the human (eg.the robotic arm of the space shuttle) or
autonomously under the control of a pre-programmed computer. Robots may be used to
perform tasks that are too dangerous and difficult for humans to implement directly (eg.the
space shuttle arm) or may be used to automate repetitive tasks that can be performed more
cheaply by a robot than by the employment of a human (eg.automobile production, robotic
surgery). – Wikipedia

A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety
of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance. A machine or
device that operates automatically or by remote control. A person who works mechanically
without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of
others. – Answers.com

What is Robotics?
It is a field of science concerned with creating machines (robots), that can move and react to
sensory inputs.

Robotics is not just related to any one branch of engineering.

It is done with the involvement of:
• Mechanical engineering: To form the structures or mechanisms to perform different
tasks. And to generate motion required for the locomotion.
• Electronics engineering: To make the circuitry to control the power supplied to different
parts and to make motors and other devices work.
• Computer science engineering: It has its use in the field of autonomous robotics (in
which robot functions on its own, without the assistance of any human being).
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 RoBoTics Club
IEEE-AiT
Module – 1 (Introduction).

Who was father of Robotics?

The word robot was introduced to the public by the Czech interwar writer Karel Capek in his
play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920.[1] The play begins in a factory that
makes artificial people called robots, though they are closer to the modern ideas of androids,
creatures who can be mistaken for humans. They can plainly think for themselves, though they
seem happy to serve. At issue is whether the robots are being exploited and the consequences
of their treatment.

Karel Capek himself did not coin the word. He wrote a short letter in reference to an etymology
in the Oxford English Dictionary in which he named his brother, the painter and writer Josef
Capek, as its actual originator.
The first industrial robots were Unimates developed by George Devol and Joe Engelberger in the late
50’s and early 60’s. The first patents were by Devol but Engelberger formed Unimation which was the
first market robots. So Engelberger has been called the “father of robotics”.

Tesla discovered remote control and patented a radio controlled robot-boat in November 8, 1898
(Patent #: 613.809). Tesla used radio waves to move a robot-boat in a small pool of water in Madison
Square Garden, New York City during the Electrical Exhibition in 1898.

Types of Robots:
• Stationary.
• Mobile.
• Wired Robots.
• Wireless Robots.
• Pre-programmed Robots.
• Programmable Robots.
• Autonomous Robots, etc….

What qualifies a machine as an autonomous robot?

• Sensing and perception: get information from its surroundings .
• Carry out different tasks: Locomotion or manipulation, do something physical–such as
move or manipulate objects.
• Re-programmable: can do different things.
• Function autonomously and/or interact with human beings.

Essential things for Robo Building ?

• Actuators (Motors, IC Engines, Pneumatic, Hydraulic).
• Wheels/Legs.
• Source of Energy.
• Controller (Switches, PC, Microprocessor/Microcontroller, PLC).
• Chassis.
• Sensors (Autonomous).
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 RoBoTics Club
IEEE-AiT
Module – 1 (Introduction).

References:
• Springer Handbook of Robotics.
• History of Robotics- By Williams.
• Wikipedia.
• Answers.com.
• Tesla Memorial Society of New York.
• Google.
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