Past Present Future

Robots have been around for quite a while now. From their first appearances, to where they stand now, they have come a long way through technical developments. And, we are already getting used to the idea of them helping us. But to what extent? At what point can we see a robot in every household, not only helping us with day to day tasks, but also with more sophisticated issues. In many different companies, they are already dependent on robots. This is due to their newly found mobility. Just think of Amazon’s latest delivery, hovering robot and you will know what we are talking about.

From Nanobots to da Vinci surgical robots, each offers different and important business values that can be seen in logistics, the medical sector, space and the U.S. army. We have seen how robots are able to improve the driving abilities of the Bugatti Veyron or to drive a car completely on its own, thanks so artificial intelligence. The da Vinci surgical robot represents a new era in medical technology, as it helps to eliminate human error. The robots that have been developed by NASA have done a lot of research for us, which we could never have done on our own. And just as well, the U.S. army is helped by robots in places where no human being can go.

Humanoids are the group of robots that represent the most tangible and most typical human-machine interaction. Think back to R2D2 and then take a look at Asimo. The features of robots today are much more humanlike, as their faces resemble a human's. Their intelligence is so advanced that we are really starting to feel and treat them as human beings. The way they are able to recognize objects and persons, to react in different situations without any intervention, creates the opportunity to employ them in a wide range of activities: from serving a dinner in a restaurant to doing dangerous rescues in a nuclear plant. Together, we are approaching a new age of robot-human collaboration.

But of course we still have a long way to go. As many of the advanced robots are still in the beginning stages of development, small productions often come with big costs. Every new invention, every new step towards artificial intelligence presents new problems. Robots are dependent on the way we create and program them; that means that they are a product of the human mind, and therefore bound to human errors. Their mobility has already come a long way: Asimo can run up and down stairs and the Packbot can pick itself up. But still, they are a long way away from the movements and the mobility of a human being. Another constraint, that we as human beings also lack, is power. We need food and sleep, just as robots need to recharge their batteries.  Hopefully over time, these limitations will be eliminated one by one. But, we are going to have to wait a little longer before we can send a robot to get our groceries, or let a robot bring goods from a distributor to a retail centre.

A look into the past, the present and the future...

A look into the past, what the present is like and what the future has in store for us....

The world of Robots.... Its still the beginning of what we know.....

Robotic Beings Rule the World

Robotic Beings Rule the World

No. Don’t worry - the humans aren’t dead…. yet. While obviously satirical, the New Zealand band, Flight of the Concords, does shed some light on the growing reliance of robotics in our daily lives and in the world of business. During the coming weeks we will explore robotics through multiple lenses, eventually painting a clearer picture of just how prevalent robots have become in various sectors, what types of value they add, and the consequences that accompany these innovations. 

Robots have steadily infiltrated all types of businesses. From hospitals to military front lines to automotive production to the depths of the ocean – all these industries have implemented and realized the benefits of robotics. Surgeons are now able to perform life-saving operations from miles away, while reducing inpatient stays and unbearable levels of pain. Cars can now be assembled with accuracy and time efficiencies that near 99.999%. Drones have now replaced manned planes, allowing militaries to execute missions without leaving their bases. Undersea exploration has just begun to breach the extreme depths (over 10,000 meters) of the ocean using unmanned submarines, which are currently impossible to reach using crewed vessels. These are just a few brief examples of some of the contexts robots have been employed in, with great success. In most cases, robots have pushed the boundaries of what humans are capable of. Ultimately, robots have added value in uncountable ways, whether it is in business, scientific research, or in healthcare. 

While this seems all well and good, others like the MIT scholar Andrew McAfee have stated that we may ultimately lose the “race against the machine.” Will there come a day when manual labor is replaced by machinery or when robotic beings really do “rule the world”. This is a highly debated and speculative topic, which, in all honesty needs to take place lest we lose sight of where robotics is going and where that puts mankind – tomorrow and hundreds of years down the line. For now, let’s just say that this blog is going to be an amazing journey through robotic applications and innovations in a variety of field and from a mixture of perspectives – Now, Robo-Boogie!

-Brendan Cmolik

Robots - The basic building blocks

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“Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.” -R. Daneel Olivaw 

To fire away here’s a video-clip of a much beloved movie.

Transformers - Yes these are Robots, very advanced Robots.

Robotics, for many of us, this is a funny term indeed. What comes to our mind if you think of a robot is an awkward looking creature; one who could do your day to day work, your most boring tasks or practically everything one can dream of. Is this image true or rather could it be true? Researchers have tried to answer this question and discussed it probably more than any other technical topic. Yet, we still haven’t reached our full expectations of the robotic future.

But what exactly are Robots?

There’s different ways of defining the concept. A theoretical description for example:
“A robot is a mechanical or virtual agent, usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by a computer program or electronic circuit.”[1] That’s a bit too theoretical, right? Let’s understand the concept of a Robot as a machine which simply reduces our work. So from ‘Can Openers’ to ‘Fans’ to even a ‘Locomotive’, these are all Robots, it’s only the function that varies.

Before we try to understand how the combination of mechanised parts, a chip and some algorithms are functioning together, let’s take a closer look at how the Robot is built and the basic nuances that will constitute that, what we actually call a "Robot".

The Robot is a machine that is characteristically defined by two major parts - the hardware and the software. Every business, when constructing a robot, have certain requirements for which the hardware and the software can be designed for. Let’s look at an example in this short video.

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[1] ‘Robot’, Sunday 06-10-2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

In this Robowars International video, we see how robots specifically compete with each other, using their strengths and weaknesses, to win the title. If we were to project this on the organisational setting the goal is to destroy competition and to advance. To get a fair example of how this specific designing works, let’s think of Razer in the video above, and think of all the possible we could attribute to him or straight to the point which mechanical instruments would you require to break a slab of Concrete, his competitor. These instruments would be what we call the hardware. As in this case the Robots are controlled manually, there’s no specific software related.

So forming the robot hardware profile, is very simple and consist only of two steps: first we take into account the requirements, secondly we put all the different hardware parts, which fulfil the requirements, together on one base. The software part however is a bit more complicated. Between all of our different hardware parts, there is always a chip (similar to the ones used in our computers) that connects the hardware with the software. On this chip we can find the programming that produces the electric motor signals that drive the robot. This programming is set in several languages, most of the Low Level, a most basic type of language that is fundamental to machines. So the robots don’t need a translation, such as they would need when using a language we find understandable.

Friends, we welcome you to the world of Mobile Robotics. We will take you on a journey showing various examples of Robots in an organisational setting, we will make you realise what they are doing for us through automation, and teach you that robots can do things that are practically impossible for the humans to do.

Aishwarya Tiwari