Robotics

Shadow Robot Company Robot Robotic Hand

Robotics is the branch of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and computer science that deals with the design, construction, operation, structure, manufacture, and application of robots..

Robotics combines various disciplines such as mechanics, electronics, computer science, artificial intelligence, control engineering, and physics. Other important areas in robotics are algebra, programmable robots, animatronics, and power machines. states, and is also used as a teaching aid.

The term robot became popular with the success of the work R.U.R. (Universal Robots Rossum), written by Karel Čapek in 1920. In the English translation of said work the Czech word robota, which means forced labor or worker, was translated into English as robot.

Advances in robotics have shown that there are robotic devices that can move and interact with their environment based on the enormous availability of precise sensors and high-performance motors, and the development of complex algorithms that allow mapping, locating, planning displacements and orientation by means of coordinates.

History of robotics

Robotics goes hand in hand with building "artifacts" that they tried to materialize the human desire to create beings in their likeness and that at the same time relieved them of tedious or dangerous work. The Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo (who built the first remote control for his car by telegraphy, the automatic chess player, the first air shuttle and many other devices), coined the term "automatic& #3. 4; in relation to the theory of traditionally associated task automation.

Karel Čapek, a Czech writer, coined the term "robot" in his play Rossum's Universal Robots / R.U.R., from the Czech word robota , meaning servitude or forced labor. The term robotics is coined by Isaac Asimov, defining the science that studies robots. Asimov also created the three laws of robotics. In science fiction, robots have been imagined visiting new worlds, seizing power, or simply relieving themselves of household chores. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, assembly, packing and packaging, mining, transportation, space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, security, and the mass production of consumer and industrial goods.

Classification of robots

A robotic leg powered by artificial air muscles.

According to your timeline

The following is the most common classification:

• 1.a Generation.

Manipulator robots. They are multifunctional mechanical systems with a simple control system, either manual, fixed sequence or variable sequence.

• 2.a Generation.

Learning robots. They repeat a sequence of movements that has been previously executed by a human operator. The way to do it is through a mechanical device. The operator performs the required movements while the robot follows and memorizes them.

• 3.a Generation.

Robots with sensorized control. The controller is a computer that executes the orders of a program and sends them to the manipulator or robot so that it can carry out the necessary movements.

According to its structure

The structure is defined by the type of general configuration of the robot, it can be metamorphic. The concept of metamorphism, of recent appearance, has been introduced to increase the functional flexibility of a robot through the change of its configuration by the robot itself. Metamorphism admits different levels, from the most elementary (tool change or terminal effect), to the most complex, such as the change or alteration of some of its elements or structural subsystems. The devices and mechanisms that can be grouped under the generic denomination of the robot, as indicated, are very diverse and it is therefore difficult to establish a coherent classification of them that can withstand a critical and rigorous analysis. The subdivision of the robots, based on their architecture, is made into the following groups: polyarticulated, mobile, androids, zoomorphic and hybrid.

• 1. Polyarticulates

In this group are robots of very diverse shapes and configurations, whose common characteristic is that they are basically sedentary (although exceptionally they can be guided to make limited movements) and are structured to move their terminal elements in a certain space of space. work according to one or more coordinate systems, and with a limited number of degrees of freedom. In this group are manipulator robots, industrial robots and Cartesian robots, which are used when it is necessary to cover a relatively wide or elongated work area, act on objects with a plane of vertical symmetry or reduce the space occupied on the floor..

• 2. Fields

They are Robots with great displacement capacity, based on carts or platforms and equipped with a rolling type locomotive system. They follow their path by remote control or guided by the information received from their environment through their sensors. These robots ensure the transport of parts from one point to another in a manufacturing chain. Guided by clues materialized through electromagnetic radiation from circuits embedded in the ground, or through bands detected photoelectrically, they can even avoid obstacles and are endowed with a relatively high level of intelligence.

• 3. Android

Robot android

They are the types of robots that try to reproduce totally or partially the form and the kinematic behavior of the human being. Currently, androids are still very little evolved devices with no practical use, and are mainly intended for study and experimentation. One of the most complex aspects of these robots, and the one on which most of the work is focused, is that of bipedal locomotion. In this case, the main problem is to dynamically and coordinately control the process in real time and simultaneously maintain the balance of the Robot. They are commonly called "puppets" when you see the cables that allow you to see how you carry out your processes.

• 4. Zoomorphic

Zoomorphic robots, which considered in a non-restrictive sense could also include androids, constitute a class characterized mainly by their locomotion systems that imitate various living beings. Despite the morphological disparity of their possible locomotion systems, it is convenient to group Zoomorphic Robots into two main categories: walkers and non-walkers. The group of non-walking zoomorphic robots is very little evolved. The experiments carried out in Japan based on beveled cylindrical segments axially coupled together and endowed with a relative movement of rotation. Zoomorphic multipedal walking robots are very numerous and are being tested in various laboratories with a view to the subsequent development of true ground vehicles, piloted or autonomous, capable of evolving on very uneven surfaces. The applications of these robots will be interesting in the field of space exploration and in the study of volcanoes.

• 5. Hybrid

These robots correspond to those difficult to classify, whose structure is located in combination with any of the previous ones already exposed, either by conjunction or by juxtaposition. For example, an articulated and wheeled segmented device is, at the same time, one of the attributes of mobile robots and zoomorphic robots.