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among others, as well as the space industry. Robots, such as the Mars rover Sojourner and the upcoming Mars Exploration rover or the underwater robotic vehicle Caribou, were designed and sent to places where humans cannot go, such as volcanoes, mars, etc., for the purpose of helping to conduct research in those particular places. On the other hand, other types of robots were designed for the purpose of entertaining small children and others. A few of them are Techno, Polly and AIBO ERS-220, which often arrive at the stores around Christmas time.

Robots are very efficient, fun and easy to design. In his book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte relates an excellent story that took place about eight years ago at the time of the televised premier of the Media Lab’s LEGO/Logo work at the Hennigan School. When the robot was first introduced to the children in school, they didn’t show interest in adopting it. However, in a third attempt, the children talked, played and had fun with the robot. The children asked the robot questions and the robot started giving responses to the children. The children in the class felt very excited and had fun with the robot.

      Finally, what exactly does robot mean?

      Many authors gave definitions based on their understanding. There is really no standard definition of robotics. When designing the robot, every designer needs to have the following properties and features, if not it is not considered a robot [2].

      The robot should have following characteristics:

       SensingFirst, robots have to recognize the surroundings and respond according to them. The robots will not behave in all the environments. We have to imbue robots with sensitivity to light (eyes), touch, pressure (like hands), chemicals (nose), sound (ears) and taste (tongue) among others. By combining all these we will get the correct working robot for the environment.

       MovementThe robot should be capable of identifying surroundings/ environment in order to perform actions such as moving its body all around the surroundings.

       EnergyRobots should be capable of identifying the power in their battery and should charge by themselves.

       IntelligenceRobots need to become smarter than humans. Those who make robots smart are called programmers. Robots should require a minimum amount of knowledge to understand and perform the task that the user instructed.

      So, the definition of the term robot encompasses a sensor, controlling device, physical device, manipulator, and a programming testing device, with mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and a small portion of chemistry also being involved.

1.2 History and Evolution of Robots

Table 1.1 shows the origins of robotics along with detailed information of when the robots came into existence, the developer’s name, etc. Presently, there are various types of robots which are used for various environments for various users. Moreover, the robots were classified into mechanical construction, electrical components and computer programming mechanism.

Table 1.1 History of the earliest robots.

Date	Significance	Robot name	Inventor
3rd century BC and earlier	First humanoid automata based on an earlier description		Yan Shi
1st century AD and earlier	Descriptions of more than 100 machines and automata which include a fire engine, a wind organ, a coin-operated machine, and a steam-powered engine		Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium, Heron of Alexandria, and others
c. 420 BC	Robot designed like a bird, which will fly	Flying Pigeon	Archytas of Tarentum
1206	First humanoid robot with automata mechanism	Robot band, hand-washing automaton [11], automated moving peacocks [12]	Al-Jazari
1495	Humanoid robot	Mechanical Knight	Leonardo da Vinci
1738	Mechanical duck which can eat, flap its wings, and excrete	Digesting Duck	Jacques de Vaucanson
1898	First radio-controlled device	Teleautomaton	Nikola Tesla
1921	First fictional automatons called robots	Rossum’s Universal Robots	Karel Čapek
1930s	Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 New York World’s Fair	Elektro	Westinghouse Electric Corporation
1946	First general-purpose digital computer	Whirlwind	Multiple people	5
1948	Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors	Elsie and Elmer	William Grey Walter
1956	First commercial robot from the Unimation company	Unimate	George Devol
1961	First installed industrial robot	Unimate	George Devol
1967 to 1972	First full-scale humanoid intelligent robot	WABOT-1	Waseda University
1973	First industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes	Famulus	KUKA Robot Group
1974	First microcomputer controlled electric industrial robot, IRB 6 from ASEA, which was already patented in 1972.	IRB 6	ABB Robotics
1975	Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product	PUMA	Victor Scheinman
1978	First object-level robot programming language, which allows robots to handle variations in object position, shape, and sensor noise	Freddy I and II, RAPT robot programming language	Patricia Ambler and Robin Popplestone
1983	First multitasking, parallel programming language used for a robot control	Скачать книгу В начало < 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 > В конец