For many centuries people invent mechanisms that can facilitate our lives. They are already countless, but undoubtedly the highest achievement of the human mind are all sorts of robots.
Mankind since ancient times tried to create mechanisms that would themselves perform heavy or hazardous work. But the first successes in this difficult matter appeared only in the XVIII century. Then, the popularity gained home mechanical dolls presented in 1738 by French scientists from Grenoble Jacques de Wikinson. He presented a faux musician who could play the flute 12 different tunes. A little late to the flute added drum and tambourine, so he created a mechanical orchestra. But de Wikinson is not stopped. The orchestra was followed by a truly amazing at the time invention a mechanical duck. She was able to walk, flap their wings, quack, turn the head.
Today's robotics was formed approximately in 50 of XX century. In 1956 George Diro and Joseph Engelberger was created the Ultimate robot, which was immediately bought by General Motors. Ultimate was a huge structure similar to the human hand. At about this time he founded the artificial intelligence lab at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. His birth obliged the laboratory of John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. In 1966 appeared the result of years of experiments, Stanford research laboratories the robot Shakey. His birth was a landmark event for robotics the first Autonomous robot that can navigate in space and to avoid obstacles, a true miracle.
A new robot developed by Hasbro, has sophisticated software and a powerful CPU, playing the role of a brain capable of recognizing complex external commands and respond to them. Hasbro B. I. O. Mechanical Bugs using a set of simple controllers located in different parts of the body and merging into a kind of nervous system. Orientation in space and find each other at the expense of built in infrared sensors. The cost of this robot is $ 40 and for that money you can get one of the four B. I. O. mechanical bugs. They can join groups of species and to fight the "outsiders". This is achieved by the fact that all four species have different behaviors and characteristics. Also any of the modifications can be controlled with the remote control.
Modern robotics
Modern robotics based computer technology: computers, robots would not have a tenth of what they can. Modern robots can be divided into two categories: workers (robots designed for office tasks) and homework.
Industrial robots account for more than 80% of all existing devices. They are able to almost completely replace the human in many plants: for example, most automotive plants all Assembly work is carried out by robots, a man can only control them. This approach has many advantages: mechanical "workers" don't make mistakes do they, in the end, no need to pay salary.
In most people, the word "robot" is associated with Android, that is something similar to man. But in most cases, such representation is false. A typical industrial robot consists of the following parts:
- The controller chip that coordinates all actions of the robot.
- A robotic hand. The main objective of arms is to move the so called END effector. Robotic hands differ in the number of degrees of freedom: the more, the better. Most industrial robots have arms with 6 degrees of freedom.
- Actuator a motor that provides the mobility of the hands. Is controlled by the controller.
- Effector roughly speaking, a nozzle on the robot arm. Such tips may be quite different from primitive clamp to the welding machine.