Editor’s Desk
Knowing
about
Robotics, a must for every
Tech Aficionado W
hat if robots could figure out more things on their own and share that knowledge among themselves? When we talk about robots, the first thing which comes to our mind is a machine which is designed like a human to make our life easy. But this concept is actually called humanoid robot. We all know about Robots, it can be any machine which is programmable by computer that is capable of doing complex series of actions automatically. But Robots come under category Robotics and it could be defined as a revelation in technology that is governed with mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science etc. In other words, we can say Robotics deals with overall design, operation, application etc. of a robot. How Robots came into Existence and Became Better than us Journey of Robots started from Da Vinci to the latest models. He had a sketched out plan for building a robot. This robot, according to the analysis of its sketch, was able to perform all basic human movements like sitting up, moving its head and jaw, walking and waving its arm. This was known as “Robotic Knight”. But this was not the first instance of robotics in the history, concept of robotics started long back. Around 350 BC, the great Greek mathematician, Archytas of Tarentum built the
first model of airplane which was a mechanical bird moved by steam. George Devol invented the first digital and programmable robot in 1954 and he named it, Unimate. In the year 1961, it was sold to General Motors. In this company it was used to lift pieces of hot metal from die casting machines at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, New Jersey. Like this the journey of robotics started very early, lets just tore off the interesting part, as many of us don’t consider airplane under robotics. So to clear it up, any device that can make “smart” decision comes under robotics. These smart decisions can be in the form of electronic circuit or computer program that control any kind of movement. In above example movement is in the form of steam. Since then, Robotics has grown leaps and emerged as an independent and important stream of studies. Now the focus is in field of developing Artificial Emotive Intelligence in robots. Imagination becomes Small when we Talk of Robots Types Industrial Robots: Industrial robots are used in manufacturing environment of an industry. These robots have specifically well built arms used for welding, handling materials etc.
58 | November 2016 |