Robotics, Mindstorm

A robot is an electro-mechanical or bio-mechanical device or group of devices that can perform autonomous or preprogrammed tasks. A telerobot may act under the direct control of a human, such as the robotic arm on a space shuttle, or autonomously under the control of a programmed computer. more...

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Robots may be used to perform tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans, such as radioactive waste clean-up, or may be used to automate mindless repetitive tasks that should be performed with more precision by a robot than by a human, such as automobile production.

Definition

The word robot is used to refer to a wide range of machines, the common feature of which is that they are all capable of movement and can be used to perform physical tasks. Robots take on many different forms, ranging from humanoid, which mimic the human form and way of moving, to industrial, whose appearance is dictated by the function they are to perform. Robots can be grouped generally as mobile robots (eg. autonomous vehicles), manipulator robots (eg. industrial robots) and self reconfigurable robots, which can conform themselves to the task at hand.

Robots may be controlled directly by a human, such as remotely-controlled bomb-disposal robots and robotic arms; or may act according to their own decision making ability, provided by artificial intelligence. However, the majority of robots fall in-between these extremes, being controlled by pre-programmed computers. Such robots may include feedback loops such that they can interact with their environment, but do not display actual intelligence.

The word "robot" is also used in a general sense to mean any machine that mimics the actions of a human (biomimicry), in the physical sense or in the mental sense. It comes from the Slavic word robota, labour or work (also used in a sense of a serf). The word robot first appeared in Czech writer Karel Čapek's science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921, and according to Čapek, was coined by the author's brother, painter Josef Čapek. The word was brought into popular Western use by famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.

Contemporary uses

Robots are growing in complexity and their use in industry is becoming more widespread. The main use of robots has so far been in the automation of mass production industries, where the same, definable tasks must be performed repeatedly in exactly the same fashion. Car production is the primary example of the employment of large and complex robots for producing goods. Robots are used in that process for the painting, welding and assembly of the cars. Robots are good for such tasks because the tasks can be accurately defined and must be performed the same every time, with little need for feedback to control the exact process being performed. Industrial robots can be manufactured in a wide range of sizes and so can handle more tasks requiring heavy lifting than a human could.

Read more at Wikipedia.org