ROBOTS

When you hear the word ‘robot’, you probably get a picture in your mind of a clever mechanical man, perhaps R2D2 or C3PO from the movie Star Wars. That is how most people thingk of robots, but the robots that really exist today are quite different from the robots of comic books, cartoons, and science fiction films and books. Most are simply huge metal arms controlled by a computer. Others are large boxes that move along a track, perhaps carrying parts through a factory. Some are submarines that dive beneath the ocean to work on undersea pipelines or oil rigs or to search for a old shipwrecks.
Robots come in many shape and sizes and have many different abilities. Basicaly, a robot is simply a computer with some sort of mechanical body designed to do a particular job. Usually, it is able to move and has one or more electronic senses. These senses are not nearly as powerful as our own senses ofsight and hearing. However, scientists and engineers are working hard to improve robots. They are constantly coming up with ways to make them see, hear and respond to the environment around them.
Robotics is the science of studying and creating robots. It is a very broad and interesting science, because like humans, robots have many fascinating aspects. It is also a new science. Although people have been imagining and writing stories about robots for many years, robotics has been a real science only since the 1970’s
Why do we need robots? First, they are hardworking and rliable. They can do dangerous work or work that is very boring or tiring for humans. They can work around the clock without complaining and without needing rest, food or vacations. And robots can go places that humans can not, such as the surface of Mars, deep under the ocean or inside the radioactive partsof a nuclear power plant.
First, a robot must have a body of some kind. Science fiction robots are made to look human, but the appearance of an industrial robot depends entirely on its job. Most of the real robots today are like giant arms bolted to the floor. The robot itself stays in one place while the arm moves to perform a task, such as painting an automobile door or picking up parts moving by on a conveyor belt. Other robots, called mobile robots, move about. For example, robot arts carry materials inside a factory or deliver mail in an office building.
A robot also needs a brain. This is really what sets a robot apart from all other machines used by people. A robot’s brain is a computer and it controls everything the robot does.
As you may know if you have used computers, they are good at computing; that is, doing rote tasks like adding a column of numbers or processing words. However, they can’t really think as a human does. For a robot to be really useful, it must have some sort of intelligence. This intelligence is contained in the programme, the set of instructions that it follows. Most robots today are not very intelligent, but researchers are constantly working to make computers, and therefore robots, smarter. An exciting new science has grown up in recent years around the idea of creating machines that can mimic human intelligence. This science is called artificial intelligence, or AI for short.
Just as humans have sense organs such as eyes and ears, robots need sensors. A robot might have electronic eyes to find its way around and see what it is doing, electronic ears to hear commands and noises, safety touch sensors to stop it if it accidentally bumps into anything. These are some of the many types of sensors used by robots.
A robot might also need a voice to speak to its owner. speech synthesizer chips can be programmed and controlled by a computer to speak in a voice that sounds almost human.
Many robots need some type of hand, usually called a manipulator or gripper, to do their jobs. Sometimes different tools, such as a screwdriver or a drill, are attached directly to the robot’s wrist. Other types of grippers use magnets and vacuums to pick up and hold different objects.