About Robots

We all have our own ideas about what a robot is and what one looks like.
We’ve seen the television and movie robots like the bad human-like robots in the movie “the terminator” with Arnold Shwarzenegger or the Matrix with Keanu Reeves. 

We’ve seen the good and fun robots portrayed in old tv cartoon shows like the Jetsons and in newer movies like Star Wars.
Lets go with some formal definitions to start with like the terms robotics and robots.
If you go on Google, it will say that Robotics is “the branch of mechanical, electric and electronic engineering and computer science.

 It deals with the design, construction, operation and application of robots as well as computer systems.
Robotics is the branch of technology tht deals with physical robots.
Now comes the definition for a robot.
First lets throw out some historical trivia…the word “robot” was first used by a writer Karel Capek in his 1920’s play about the future titled, “R.U.R or Rossum’s Universal Robots”. The word “robot” itself is a Czech word which means “forced labor”.
Robots are programmable machines that can carry out a series of actions autonomously or semi autonomously by interacting with the real world using sensors and other devices.
We can say that robots have three main characteristics- sensing, movement and energy.
We seeclunky metal or plastic human looking robots walking or gliding on wheels.
We see programs on television showing the inside of car manufacuring plants with a long line of robot arms assembling cars or we see dozens of industrial robots moving around on wheels in an Amazon packing and distribution center.
Now we are about to discuss the different branches of robotics and the types of robots that you may see from your robot vacuum or pool cleaner to your companion cat robot that your grand mother may have or the warehouse robot you may have where you work.
We have seen companies like Hanson Robotics showing off their very human looking and acting robot Sophia on late night talk shows and we have seen the television show Westworld with their robots and a very dark future portrayed with them going out of control.
We have also seen a squad of dancing human like robots by the company Boston Dynamics and also their bizarre looking dog like robots running into the forest tracking down whatever robots can track down when told to do so.
So lets look at the types of robots now using this categorization.
1. consumer and
2. industrial robots
Under consumer robots we will have things like …companion robots, house cleaning vacuum robots, pool cleaning, lawn mower and eavestrough cleaning robots. We see toy robots and flying drones and more.
Now RC or remote control cars and moving manequins at haunted houses and Disney land have usually been simply examples of what are called animatronics and not generaly robots.
This line is changing as more computerization and programming is goin into the newer theme park displays.
Older animatronics have simply used control systems like DMX to move them according to a pre entered routine or to move them live with a remote control.
The more advanced robotic displays will be a form of autonomous robots which will mean that they move around more on their own and rely on their built in sensors and programming to avoid objects and detect sounds and objects and dangers etc.
So lets explore our next menu option of the types of robots or feel free to move anywhere on our website.
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