Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Most Advanced Robots Today


Aristotle was the first one who wrote something that nowdays can be understood as the idea of robotics. Aristotle wrote in "The Politics" nearly two dozen centuries ago - "This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that "Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus" as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing."

Czech author and playwright Karel Čapek popularized the term robot in his 1920 play, RUR: Rossum's Universal Robots. "Robot" comes from the word "robota" meaning "labor".
Soon after W. Grey Walter 1948 built Elmer and Elsie, two autonomous robots that looked like turtles, Isaac Asimov wrote the Three Laws of Robotics which state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to 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 the 1961 the first industrial robot, Unimate, was online at a General Motors automobile factory to work with heated machines. It's motorized arm weighs 4,000 pounds and has up to six fully programmable axes of motion. 1963, the Rancho Arm was the first computer controlled artificial robotic arm designed as a tool for the handicapped.
The first anthropomorphic robot built in the world (1973) was WABOT-1, made in Waseda University, Japan. It was able to communicate with a person in Japanese and to measure distances and directions to the objects using external receptors. It has artificial ears, eyes and an artificial mouth.

The Honda Motor Company developed ASIMO, the most advanced humanoid robot in the world.
ASIMO is the first humanoid robot in the world that can walk independently and climb stairs.
Honda wanted to create a robot that would be a helper for people so it can also understand spoken commands, recognize voices and faces and with its arms and hands it can turn on light switches, open doors, carry objects...
4 ft 3in (130 cm) high
119 pounds (54 kg) weight
walking speed 1.7 mph (2.7 km/hour)
running speed 3.7 mph (6 km/hour)

World's first running humanoid robot was SONY's QRIO (2003). QRIO can run at 23 cm/s, and is capable of voice and face recognition. It remembers people as well as their likes and dislikes. QRIO's internal battery lasts about 1 hour.

QRIO AIBO
2 ft (60 cm) high
16 pounds (7.3 kg) weight

QRIO is credited in Guinness World Records (2005 edition) as being the first robot capable of running.QRIO follow up on the success of SONY's AIBO toy. AIBO robotic pet is able to walk, "see" its environment via camera, and recognize spoken commands, AIBOware is the software the AIBO runs on its memory stick. Sony stoped development of the AIBO in 2006.

Robosapien

RoboSapien Robosapien is robot designed by Mark Tilden (robotics physicist who worked for NASA) and produced by Wow Wee toys. The Robosapien is preprogrammed with moves, and also can be controlled by an infrared remote control, or by either a personal computer equipped with an infrared transmitter, and an infrared transmitter-equipped PDA. WowWee has also in its production Roboraptor, Roboreptile, Robosapien v2, Robopet, Robopanda, Roboquad, Flytech, Mini Robos, SpiderSapien, Homersapien and other robots.

Mindstorm

Mindstorms

NXT Intelligent Brick, LEGO's Mindstorms robot's "brain," features a powerful 32-bit microprocessor and more memory, plus support for USB 2.0, Bluetooth...
It has 3 Interactive servo motors feature built-in rotation sensors to align speed for precise control.

EMIEW

EMIEW

Hitachi's robot EMIEW use wheels instead of feet.
The 4.2 ft (1.3 m) EMIEW was the world's quickest-moving robot yet at 3.7 miles per hour (6 km/h). It has the features of recognition of voices and sounds from a distance, high-speed and agile movement, ability to get around obstructions and natural arm movement like a human.

toyota robot

Car maker Toyota also made its trumpet-playing humanoid robot.
Toyota robot is designed for healthcare. It can blow air through a trumpet and finger the valves to actually play a musical instrument.

PaPeRo

Papero

PaPeRo was developed by Japanese firm, NEC Corporation. It has the ability to remember its owners interests and preference and can recognize 650 phrases and speak more than 3000. When it cannot see a face well or if the distance or location is not satisfactory, it will adjust the distance on its own or tell the person," It's too dark."

1.26 ft (38.5 cm) high
11 pounds (5 kg) weight

Murphy's Laws

--- Never trust modern technology. Trust it only when it is old technology.
--- Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
--- To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
--- We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
--- The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
--- If it works in theory, it won't work in practice.
If it works in practice it won't work in theory.

Arthur C. Clark
--- A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.


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