Robotics: An Overview
Robotics is a technology of artificial intelligence that includes conception, design, operation, and manufacture of robots. Robotics is a combination of electronics, mechanics, and software. It deals with the study of building intelligent and efficient robots.
What is Robotics?
Robotics is a branch of Artificial Intelligence. It is mainly composed of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer science engineering for construction, designing, and application of robots.
Robotics is an engineering science of building or designing an application of robots. The aim of robotics is to design an efficient robot.
Robots are machines that carry out actions or series of actions automatically. It encompasses a broad range of devices, it can control its actions, receive sensory feedback, and process information. Robots are well programmable. One can guide a robot with control devices that are external or embedded within the robot itself. A robot can be fully autonomous or it can be completely subservient to its control mechanism.
Robotic Process Automation
Robotics Process Automation is a software program to automate tasks just like a human being. Robotic automation interacts with existing IT architecture without the requirement of any complex system integration.
It is used to automate workflow, infrastructure, back-office processes which are labor-intensive. RPA software bots can interact with in-house applications, websites, user portal, etc. This software program runs on the PC, laptop, or mobile device of the end-user. It is a sequence of commands which are executed by Bots under some defined set of business rules.
The main goal of the Robotics process automation process to replace repetitive and boring clerical tasks performed by humans, with a virtual workforce. There is no requirement to develop code, nor does it require direct access to the code or database of the applications.
Key Components of Robotics
Power Supply: working power to the robot is provided by batteries, hydraulic, solar power, or pneumatic power sources.
Actuators: these are the energy conversion device used inside a robot. The main function of actuators is to convert energy into movement.
Electric motors (DC/AC): Motors are the electro-mechanical components used for converting electrical energy into its equivalent mechanical energy. Motors are used in robots for providing rotational movement.
Sensors: it provides real-time information on the task environment. Robots are equipped with the tactile sensors it imitates the mechanical properties of touch receptors of human fingerprints and a vision sensor is used for computing the depth in the environment.
Controller: Controller is a part of the robot that coordinates all motion of the mechanical system. It also receives input from the immediate environment through various sensors. The heart of the robot’s controller is a microprocessor linked with the input/output and monitoring device. The command issued by the controller activates the motion control mechanism, consisting of various controllers, actuators, and amplifiers.
Human beings have built the power of computer systems in terms of diverse working domains, with increasing speed and reducing size with respect to time.
Applications of Robotics
Robotics is a branch of engineering and technology of artificial intelligence that includes the conception, design, manufacture, and operation of robots. This field deals with a combination of electronics, computer science, artificial intelligence, mechatronics, nanotechnology, and bioengineering. Here are just a few examples of the tasks they carry out:
Assist people with health conditions or impairments: Robots can help those with physical disabilities carry out everyday tasks. For example, wheelchairs have evolved into motorized multi-purpose machines; for example, they can help users with limited use of their arms open the fridge door and retrieve a meal. Items like prosthetic arms and legs have also gone from being simple peg-like devices to “smart” limbs able to communicate with the human brain.
Help around the home: Robotic household appliances, such as mops and vacuum cleaners, perform work on behalf of their owners.
Control autonomous cars: Autonomous cars have been prototyped since the 1920s, but the most commonly-known facilitator of modern self-driving car research is probably Google. Vehicles that drive themselves are getting smarter, and though they haven’t become mainstream, some have already taken to the roads.
Read and learn: University of Oxford researchers created Marge, a “literate” robot that can read the newspaper and teach herself facts. Marge’s “intelligence” is derived from her software, and the researchers responsible for her are attempting to teach her the reasoning skills found in humans.
Work in extreme environments: War or nuclear zones, sub-sea areas, and outer space, is all too dangerous for people to work. Robots can carry out many of hazardous tasks. For example, drones allow for reconnaissance in enemy-occupied areas in times of war, Curiosity is off exploring Mars, and Wally is crawling around on the floor or the ocean.
Robotics Aspects
There are several types of robots. They are serving in different environments and for many different uses. Though there is diversity in their application, all of them share three basic similarities when it comes to their construction:
The robots have electrical components for providing power and control the machinery.
They have mechanical construction, shape, or form designed to accomplish a particular task.
It contains some type of computer program that determines what, when, and how a robot does something.
Robotics is the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Robots are multi-functional, re-programmable, automatic industrial machines designed for replacing humans in hazardous work. The aim of the robot is to manipulate the objects by perceiving, moving, picking, modifying the physical properties of the object. Robots are used for jobs that are dirty, dull, and dangerous.
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