Will Robots One Day Procreate?
February 10, 2010 I am amazed that I am writing again about something that has evolved into daily life for many people. I just did not imagine that Robots would ever effect or be a part of my lifetime. To me Robots were funny things that were imaginary that I watched on my favorite cartoon the Jetsons or Lost in Space. The Jetsons and Lost In Space were 1960’s television programs that were fictional and pure entertainment to stretch the imagination. Robots to me were fun imaginary abstracts. I recall thinking when I watched the Wizard of Oz that the tin man seemed to move and act like the Robots on the Jetsons. The movement was stiff and abstract. I was born in 1962 and I had no knowledge that robots of any form existed. Robots did exist but not in the form depicted on Lost In Space or The Jetsons. The development of robots has been documented to give us a timeline that I have listed in chronological order. It is as follows. Robots have been documented to have been around in one form or another since 270BC. An ancient Greek engineer named Ctesibus made organs and water clocks with movable figures. In 1918 author Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" which was about a frightening artificial life form created by Dr. Frankenstein. In 1921 the term "robot" was first used in a play called "R.U.R." or "Rossum's Universal Robots" by the Czech writer Karel Capek. The plot was simple: man makes robot then robot kills man. In 1941 Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov first used the word "robotics" to describe the technology of robots and predicted the rise of a powerful robot industry. In 1942 Asimov wrote “Runaround", a story about robots which contained the "Three Laws of Robotics": (1.) A robot may not injure a human, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. (2.) A robot must obey the orders it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. (3.) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. In 1948 “Cybernetics", an influence on artificial intelligence research was published by Norbert Wiener In 1956 George Devol and Joseph Engelberger formed the world's first robot company. In 1959 Computer-assisted manufacturing was demonstrated at the Servomechanisms Lab at MIT. In 1961 the first industrial robot was online in a General Motors automobile factory in New Jersey. It was called UNIMATE. In 1963 the first artificial robotic arm to be controlled by a computer was designed. The Rancho Arm was designed as a tool for the handicapped and its six joints gave it the flexibility of a human arm. In 1965 DENDRAL was the first expert system or program designed to execute the accumulated knowledge of subject experts. In 1968 the octopus-like Tentacle Arm was developed by Marvin Minsk. In 1969 the Stanford Arm was the first electrically powered, computer-controlled robot arm. In 1970 Shakey was introduced as the first mobile robot controlled by artificial intelligence. Shakey was produced by SRI International. In 1974 a robotic arm (the Silver Arm), that performed small-parts assembly using feedback from touch and pressure sensors was designed. In 1979 The Stanford Cart crossed a chair-filled room without human assistance. The cart had a TV camera mounted on a rail which took pictures from multiple angles and relayed them to a computer. The computer analyzed the distance between the cart and the obstacles. A robot is by definition “an automatic device that performs functions normally ascribed to humans or a machine in the form of a human." The inspiration for the design of a robot manipulator is the human arm, but with some differences. For example, a robot arm can extend by telescoping, by sliding cylindrical sections one over another to lengthen the arm. Robot arms also can be constructed so that they bend. Grippers are designed to mimic the function and structure of the human hand. Many robots are equipped with special grippers to grasp devices such as a rack of test tubes or an arc-welder. The joints of a robotic arm are usually driven by electric motors. In most robots, the gripper is moved from one position to another, changing its orientation. A computer calculates the joint angles needed to move the gripper to the desired position this is called inverse kinematics. Some multi-jointed arms are equipped with feedback controllers that receive input from a computer. Each joint in the arm has a device to measure its angle and send that calculation to the controller. If the actual angle of the arm does not equal the calculated angle for the wanted position, the controller moves the joint until the arm's angle matches the calculated angle. Controllers and associated computers have to process sensor information. Cameras are used that locate objects to be grasped, or they or they have to touch sensors on grippers that regulate the grasping force. Any robot designed to move in an unstructured or unknown environment will require many sensors and controls. The sensors are called ultrasonic or infrared sensors. These are the sensors that help the robots to avoid obstacles. Some Robots at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) need a lot of sensors and powerful onboard computers to process the information that allows them to move. Like the planetary rovers that walk on the planet’s surface. This is particularly true for robots designed to work in closely with human beings. Especially robots that assist people with disabilities and robots that delivers meals in a hospital. Safety must be a priority to the design of robots that are involved in human service. Biomedical engineers developed a robotic arm to very precisely resurface the knee before replacing it. In order to do this, a 3-D image of the knee is generated, providing a live-action view of the knee during surgery. A stereo camera system constantly updates surgeons on the location of the diseased portion of the knee. Doing so keeps the healthy parts untouched. Visual alarms and artificial resistance tell the surgeons when they are too close to healthy parts. After the resurfacing is done, the implant is placed.


There were 700,000 robots in the industrial world in 1995 and over 500,000 were used in Japan. There were 120,000 robots used in Industry in Western Europe and 60,000 in the United States and many were doing tasks to dangerous or unpleasant for humans. Some of the hazardous jobs are handling material such a blood or urine samples, searching building for fugitives and deep water search. Robots were also doing some jobs that are repetitive motion. These robots can be run 24hrs a day without getting tired. General Motors Corporation uses these robots for spot welding, painting, machine loading, parts transfer, and assembly. Assembly lines have been the fastest growing area for use of robots because of higher precision. This leads to lower cost for labor. Robotics produces higher quality work. Many manufacturing jobs have been lost to the use of robots instead of people. There now exist robots that vacuum our floors, have humanlike behavior in video games. Some guard against swimming pool drowning. Some respond to our voice commands in some automobile models, and provide us with directory assistance and sometimes, guide us through voice mail procedures. The autonomous robots have their own intrinsic intelligence to meet whatever level of control is handed down from the user. These robots operate from a wide variety of platforms. All-terrain vehicles to submersible robots or even whole colonies of interactive robots, each smaller than a human hand. The trait common to all these systems is the ability to share intuitively between human and machine. This permits the system to cope with interruptions in communication links and component failures, and changes in operator workload, resources. Also changes in mission requirements.

There are lawn robots that operate automatically using sophisticated computer and a perimeter wire to determine when and where to cut the lawn. The lawn mowing robot can move freely within an enclosed area, detecting the faint signal from its transmitter to tell it where and where not to mow. The lawn robot can also operate in an area without a perimeter wire in an enclosed area utilizing a fence or small border at least 4 inches tall. This is a clear example of an autonomous robot. "In 20 years, we've gone from robots that can hardly maneuver around objects to ones that can navigate in unstructured environments,” There is also the Roomba, the automated vacuum cleaner. Robots have been produced with human like characteristics and are being prototyped to mimic personality characteristics. There are people working on what is called an Android that some people fear will replace some human interaction. Some have speculated on the idea that some will interact with the Androids sexually. Some people feel that we will be intermingled with robots in the near future that the thought of making love to a robot will not seem strange. Experts feel a flesh-and-steel robot that feels looks and sounds like a human would have more marketability than online chat rooms that replace physical interactions.
This morning I was checking my Face book and a friend sent me a link to some new information technology that he wanted to share. I have included the link in this blog, along with one I found that clearly displays our advancement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ovrT8pWww&feature=player_embedded

http://dreams.honda.com/#/video_wi