Once upon a time, robots existed only in science fiction.. In fact, the word itself originated in a science fiction play. It comes from the Czech word “robota,” meaning “work,” and was coined by Czech playwright Karel Capek in his 1920 play R.U.R., which stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.”
In Capek’s words, a robot was “a man-made machine of flesh and blood, but lacking a soul.” The play had such an impact during its run in London in 1923 that the word “robot” came into the English language, and left most people with an indelible science-fictional image of robots as machines that look and behave like human beings.
However, modern robots seldom look anything like humans. Our robots are, as one science encylopedia defines them, “automatic machines that do work, simulating and replacing human activity.” (Strictly speaking, if a robot is humanoid in form, it is called an “android,” another term originally used in science fiction — as was the word “robotics,” which was coined by Isaac Asimov in the 1950s.)
By that definition there have been robots for a long time. Newspapers, for example, have long had machines that automatically printed, folded and bundled papers, but nobody thinks of them as robots.
The development of computers has provided modern robots with on-board brains that enable them to carry out complex activities such as decision-making, self-programming and sensing their surroundings. Nevertheless, the mechanical part of a robot is as important as its electronic brain–and, in its own way, just as complex. Suppose you want to teach a robot to pick up an egg. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But think of everything that happens when you pick up an egg.
First, your arm must be able to move up and down, side to side and in and out Your hand position is fine-tuned by the wrist, and finally your thumb and fingers grasp the egg. This all takes a very complicated sequence of mental commands and physical responses — and you’re not done. If you squeeze the egg too hard, you’re going to have egg on your face. You don’t because you already know it’s going to be fairly light and very fragile. As well, you receive feedback from your senses that helps you grasp the egg and move it from place to place without breaking or dropping it.
You could teach a robot to pick up an egg by carefully programming each step into it. But you’d have to make certain the egg was in exactly the same position every time you wanted the robot to repeat the action — and that the egg was always the same size.
This works on an assembly line, where robots endlessly repeat specific actions involving identical parts. But to function in the more chaotic real world, robots need is a way to sense their surroundings and react to them the way we do.
Some senses are easier to simulate than others. Electrical sensors can tell robots when they are close to an object. Pressure sensors in a robot’s hand can tell it it has a firm grasp of an object.
Vision is far more difficult. Robots are quite good at “seeing” two-dimensional patterns, but not at seeing three-dimensional objects. To do so, the robot’s brain must first reduce the digitized image of the object provided by the camera to a basic shape — say, a cube. A cube viewed from anywhere not directly in line with one of its faces has seven corners visible. By measuring the angles of each corner, the computer can decide how the cube is positioned. More complicated objects like a table can be broken down to simpler elements — i.e., four vertical pillars with a horizontal slab on top.
Another way of teaching a robot to “see” is to store in its memory many different images of an object from different angles. The computer then takes the digitized image from its camera and searches its memory for a match
All these approaches have limitations, and vision is just one of the problems that must be overcome before anyone can even think of building a robot that truly behaves like a human being. But in the meantime, robots are already performing tasks too boring or dangerous for humans, in places where humans can’t go (into volcanoes, deep under the ocean, into the far reaches of space). You can even buy a SONY-manufactured robot dog, AIBO, as a pet.
Besides, who needs robots that behave just like human beings? We have enough humans beings already.
