Robot - Robotics Information and Reviews

Frank Vanella asked:


The importance of automation and robots in all manufacturing industries is growing. Industrial robots have replaced human beings in a wide variety of industries. Robots out perform humans in jobs that require precision, speed, endurance and reliability. Robots safely perform dirty and dangerous jobs. Traditional manufacturing robotic applications include material handling (pick and place), assembling, painting, welding, packaging, palletizing, product inspection and testing. Industrial robots are used in a diverse range of industries including automotive, electronics, medical, food production, biotech, pharmaceutical and machinery. The ISO definition of a manipulating industrial robot is “an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator”. According to the definition it can be fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications. These industrial robots are programmable in three or more axes. They are multi-functional pieces of equipment that can be custom-built and programmed to perform a variety of operations. The major advantages of industrial robots is that they can be programmed to suit industry specific requirements and can work continuously for years, consistently meeting high manufacturing quality standards. The economic life span of an industrial robot is approximately 12-16 years. Due to their persistent accuracy industrial robots have become an indispensable part of manufacturing. Industrial robots are classified into different categories based on their mechanical structure. The major categories of industrial robots are:



Gantry (Cartesian) Robot: They are stationary robots having three elements of motion. They work from an overhead grid with a rectangular work envelope. They are mainly used to perform ‘pick and place’ actions. Gantry robots have all their axes above the work making them also ideal for dispensing applications.
SCARA Robots: (Selectively Compliant Articulated Robot Arm) These robots have 4 axes of motion. They move within an x-y-z coordinated circular work envelope. They are used for factory automation requiring pick and place work, application and assembly operations and handling machine tools.

Articulated robots: An articulated robot has rotary joints. It can have from two to ten or more interactive joints. Articulated robots are well suited to welding, painting and assembly.



Basic industrial robot designs can be customized with the addition of different peripherals. End effectors, optical systems, and motion controllers are essential add-ons. End effectors are the end-of-arm-tooling (EOAT) attached to robotic arms. Grippers or wrenches that are used to move or assemble parts are examples of end effectors. End effectors are designed and used to sense and interact with the external environment. The end effectors’ design depends on the application requirements of the specific industry. Machine Vision systems are robotic optical systems. They are built-on digital input/output devices and computer networks used to control other manufacturing equipment such as robotic arms. Machine vision is used for the inspection of manufactured goods such as semiconductor chips. Motion controllers are used to move robots and position stages smoothly and accurately with sub-micron repeatability. Industrial robots fill the need for greater precision, reliability, flexibility and production output in the increasingly competitive and complex manufacturing industry environment.



Website content

Tim Spencer asked:


robots.txt is possibly the most miss understood file that a website can contain.

Many people think that by using a robots.txt file on their website they are protecting pages and folders from thieves and hackers. In fact it is totally the opposite! robots.txt opens up an enormous security hole that hackers and theives will use to easily gain access to the parts of your website that you don’t want them to.

What is robots.txt?

robots.txt is a file that you create and upload to your websites root directory that is used by search engine spiders to determine which parts of your website they should index and which folders/pages that you, the website owner,

don’t want listed in search engine indexes.

Why would not want pages indexed?

There are many reasons why you might not want search engines to index pages on your website, such as private membership pages or exclusive training pages and such like.

If you are an Internet Marketer selling your own ebook or other digital product, you wouldn’t want your thank you pages indexed either!

And this is where the misunderstanding comes to the fore, and robots.txt becomes your foe.

Many online marketers who provide ebooks or other digital products for instant download will list their download thank you pages in the robots.txt file because they obviously don’t want those pages indexed in search engines.

By using robots.txt this way though, you will be opening up your product to anyone who has a slight bit of knowledge about how the file works.

robots.txt is easily readable by any human that opens a browser and types in http://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt and if you have listed your thank you pages, all they have to do is go to that url and take your product(s)!

It’s that easy!

And I’m living proof that this works, as this is exactly what happened to me. I had listed my thank you pages in robots.txt and thought that they were safe from hackers and thieves, then one day I was checking my web site stats and BAM, someone had been to every single thank you page, and taken everything.

The moral is, don’t list any URL in robots.txt that you don’t want humans to have free access to. Use robots.txt with great caution and secure your thank you pages using dedicated software.



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Kingsley asked:


It is possible for you to trade the forex market automatically even if you are not available at that moment. If you employ the services of an automated forex trading robot it will place trade for you even when you are not there, as long as your computer is on. It is a cool way for a trader that loves to trade always but unable to be present on his computer due to one reason or the other. It functions just as the way a professional trader does trade. As for the set of people that like to trade forex round the clock, an automated forex trading robot can do the task for you. With as little as $500 or above, you can trade forex through this automated means.

Forex trading robot is a tool for every forex trader, both those that trade on a short term basis and long time basis. The good part of a forex trading robot is that it can predict profitable trades that can help you make profit. Don’t take this statement to include every trading robot. In fact, most forex trading robot is as good as wasting your money. Not only will you waste money buying them but you will end up losing your hard earned money when you put it into use. It is highly recommend you start up with a forex trading robot initially with a demo account, after which you can then migrate to a live trading account. Meanwhile, you should start a live trading account with a small capital and if things work well from there, you can start fully with your desired capital using live forex.

Some of the people that forex trading favors are:

-people that want to divide their trading capital by using forex robots to trade them

-people that are experience and has no confidence that they are going to make gain when they begin to trade

-former traders that weren’t successful when they were trading on their own

-firms that are searching for a second line of investment

-finally force brokers who wish to offer their customers a second way to trade if they are not confident with their system of trading.

You can make a huge sum of money trading forex once you are equipped with the right techniques and tools. I know what I am talking about because I am into it.

Signing up and starting forex is one of the simplest online business to start up with but making money out of it requires a lot of practice, trial and most of all experience. We know that there are some specie of people who are lucky to make money from forex, I am glad to say that I am among them. What you need to succeed is a forex trading robot, not just any forex trading robot but one that can make ends meet for you. 18 out of every 20 forex trading robots don’t deliver any positive result. One of the functions of a forex trading robot is its capability to handle the short term algorithms that runs your trade for you. Using an automatic forex trading robot to carry out your trading is one of the few effective ways to trade profitably, though not all forex trading robot delivers profitable result.

Till date, I was able to try out tens of different types of forex trading robots which claim it can earn me money on an autopilot way, but I haven’t encountered one that delivers a satisfying result. To be sincere, I am tired of using them due to the fact that I feel it’s not easy to build. This made me to decide to relay on the signals I get through technical methods and sometimes I trade using news. Meanwhile, I decided to resume trying them out considering the fact that forex and stock brokerage companies make use of robots that work for them, including their users.

Recently, I came across a review concerning the most recent forex trading robot which just entered the market newly. What baffled me was that most news I read concerning this forex trading robot says that they were making satisfactory gains using it. This made me decide to try it out. As I always do with every robot, I tried it initially using a demo account to see how it works from there. I opened a demo account using a Metatrader as recommend by them, even though I prefer using Marketiva. My experiment with this forex trading robot went well, to be sincere with you I made back the money I traded with it and since then the way I trade forex has changed. I won’t tell you that every trade I perform using this robot I made profit with it, no it’s not like that. But I can tell you that out of 50 trades I traded with this robot, 39 of them were successfully. To summarize it all, this forex trading robot I tried was unlike many others and I suggest you give it your own shot. You never know, this might be your final quest for a forex robot that truly works. Less I forget, the name of the robot is fap turbo.

You can find more about the trading robot at Fap Turbo Review Fap Turbo



Robot

s.sankar asked:


Robotics History

 

Definition of a ‘Robot’

                                                                           

First use of the word ‘Robot’

 

First use of the word ‘Robotics’

 

Three Laws of Robotics

 

The First Robot ‘Unimate’

 

Modern Industrial Robots

 

Benefits of Robots

 

 

Definition of a ‘Robot’

 

According to the Robot Institute of America (1979) a robot is:

“A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks”.

 

A more inspiring definition can be found in Webster. According to Webster a robot is:

“An automatic device that performs functions normally ascribed to humans or a machine in the form of a human.”

 

 

First use of the word ‘Robot’

 

The acclaimed Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) made the first use of the word ‘robot’, from the Czech word for forced labor or serf. Capek was reportedly several times a candidate for the Nobel prize for his works and very influential and prolific as a writer and playwright.

 

The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in January 1921.

 

In R.U.R., Capek poses a paradise, where the machines initially bring so many benefits but in the end bring an equal amount of blight in the form of unemployment and social unrest.

 

The play was an enormous success and productions soon opened throughout Europe and the U.S. R.U.R’s theme, in part, was the dehumanization of man in a technological civilization.

 

You may find it surprising that the robots were not mechanical in nature but were created through chemical means. In fact, in an essay written in 1935, Capek strongly fought that this idea was at all possible and, writing in the third person, said:

 

“It is with horror, frankly, that he rejects all responsibility for the idea that metal contraptions could ever replace human beings, and that by means of wires they could awaken something like life, love, or rebellion. He would deem this dark prospect to be either an overestimation of machines, or a grave offence against life.”

[The Author of Robots Defends Himself - Karl Capek, Lidove noviny, June 9, 1935, translation: Bean Comrada]

 

There is some evidence that the word robot was actually coined by Karl’s brother Josef, a writer in his own right. In a short letter, Capek writes that he asked Josef what he should call the artificial workers in his new play.

 

Karel suggests Labori, which he thinks too ‘bookish’ and his brother mutters “then call them Robots” and turns back to his work, and so from a curt response we have the word robot.

 

 

First use of the word ‘Robotics’

 

The word ‘robotics’ was first used in Runaround, a short story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov (born Jan. 2, 1920, died Apr. 6, 1992). I, Robot, a collection of several of these stories, was published in 1950.

 

One of the first robots Asimov wrote about was a robotherapist. A modern counterpart to Asimov’s fictional character is Eliza. Eliza was born in 1966 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Joseph Weizenbaum who wrote Eliza — a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine.

 

She was initially programmed with 240 lines of code to simulate a psychotherapist by answering questions with questions.

 

 

Three Laws of Robotics

 

Asimov also proposed his three “Laws of Robotics”, and he later added a ‘zeroth law’.

 

Law Zero: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Law One: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate a higher order law.

Law Two: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with a higher order law.

Law Three: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with a higher order law.

 

 

The First Robot: ‘Unimate’

 

After the technology explosion during World War II, in 1956, a historic meeting occurs between George C. Devol, a successful inventor and entrepreneur, and engineer Joseph F. Engelberger, over cocktails the two discuss the writings of Isaac Asimov.

 

Together they made a serious and commercially successful effort to develop a real, working robot. They persuaded Norman Schafler of Condec Corporation in Danbury that they had the basis of a commercial success.

 

Engelberger started a manufacturing company ‘Unimation’ which stood for universal automation and so the first commercial company to make robots was formed. Devol wrote the necessary patents. Their first robot nicknamed the ‘Unimate’. As a result, Engelberger has been called the ‘father of robotics.’

 

The first Unimate was installed at a General Motors plant to work with heated die-casting machines. In fact most Unimates were sold to extract die castings from die casting machines and to perform spot welding on auto bodies, both tasks being particularly hateful jobs for people.

 

Both applications were commercially successful, i.e., the robots worked reliably and saved money by replacing people. An industry was spawned and a variety of other tasks were also performed by robots, such as loading and unloading machine tools.

 

Ultimately Westinghouse acquired Unimation and the entrepreneurs’ dream of wealth was achieved. Unimation is still in production today, with robots for sale.

 

The robot idea was hyped to the skies and became high fashion in the Boardroom. Presidents of large corporations bought them, for about $100,000 each, just to put into laboratories to “see what they could do;” in fact these sales constituted a large part of the robot market. Some companies even reduced their ROI (Return On Investment criteria for investment) for robots to encourage their use.

 

 

Modern Industrial Robots

 

The image of the “electronic brain” as the principal part of the robot was pervasive. Computer scientists were put in charge of robot departments of robot customers and of factories of robot makers. Many of these people knew little about machinery or manufacturing but assumed that they did.

 

(There is a common delusion of electrical engineers that mechanical phenomena are simple because they are visible. Variable friction, the effects of burrs, minimum and redundant constraints, nonlinearities, variations in work pieces, accommodation to hostile environments and hostile people, etc. are like the “Purloined Letter” in Poe’s story, right in front of the eye, yet unseen.) They also had little training in the industrial engineer’s realm of material handling, manufacturing processes, manufacturing economics and human behavior in factories.

 

As a result, many of the experimental tasks in those laboratories were made to fit their robot’s capabilities but had little to do with the real tasks of the factory.

 

Modern industrial arms have increased in capability and performance through controller and language development, improved mechanisms, sensing, and drive systems. In the early to mid 80’s the robot industry grew very fast primarily due to large investments by the automotive industry.

 

The quick leap into the factory of the future turned into a plunge when the integration and economic viability of these efforts proved disastrous. The robot industry has only recently recovered to mid-80’s revenue levels.

 

In the meantime there has been an enormous shakeout in the robot industry. In the US, for example, only one US company, Adept, remains in the production industrial robot arm business. Most of the rest went under, consolidated, or were sold to European and Japanese companies.

 

In the research community the first automata were probably Grey Walter’s machina (1940’s) and the John’s Hopkins beast. Teleoperated or remote controlled devices had been built even earlier with at least the first radio controlled vehicles built by Nikola Tesla in the 1890’s.

 

Tesla is better known as the inventor of the induction motor, AC power transmission, and numerous other electrical devices. Tesla had also envisioned smart mechanisms that were as capable as humans.

 

An excellent biography of Tesla is Margaret Cheney’s Tesla, Man Out of Time, Published by Prentice-Hall, c1981.

 

SRI’s Shakey navigated highly structured indoor environments in the late 60’s and Moravec’s Stanford Cart was the first to attempt natural outdoor scenes in the late 70’s.

 

From that time there has been a proliferation of work in autonomous driving machines that cruise at highway speeds and navigate outdoor terrains in commercial applications.

 

Fully functioning androids (robots that look like human beings) are many years away due to the many problems that must be solved. However, real, working, sophisticated robots are in use today and they are revolutionizing the workplace.

 

These robots do not resemble the romantic android concept of robots. They are industrial manipulators and are really computer controlled “arms and hands”. Industrial robots are so different to the popular image that it would be easy for the average person not to recognize one.

 

 

Benefits

 

Robots offer specific benefits to workers, industries and countries. If introduced correctly, industrial robots can improve the quality of life by freeing workers from dirty, boring, dangerous and heavy labor. it is true that robots can cause unemployment by replacing human workers but robots also create jobs: robot technicians, salesmen, engineers, programmers and supervisors.

 

The benefits of robots to industry include improved management control and productivity and consistently high quality products. Industrial robots can work tirelessly night and day on an assembly line without an loss in performance.

 

Consequently, they can greatly reduce the costs of manufactured goods. As a result of these industrial benefits, countries that effectively use robots in their industries will have an economic advantage on world market

 



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Michael Hehn asked:


A robot is an electromechanical device capable of performing both programmed and autonomous tasks. Robots in fictional media tend to have humanoid characteristics and are able to interact with their human creators. Fictional robots also tend to be highly intelligent and follow human orders.

Much of the drama of robots in fiction occurs when robots either exceed their programming or their programming becomes corrupted. A robot that began a story as humanity’s faithful servant often ended it by becoming the villain. The following is a brief overview of robots in fiction.

Reading About Robots

In 1942, science fiction author Isaac Asimov introduced the world to his Three Laws of Robotics. In a series of short stories and novels, Asimov explained these Three Laws through the interaction of robots and humans.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were 1) A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and 3) A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov’s robots were constructed with fictional “positronic” brains. His robots were constrained by the Three Laws, with the First Law taking precedence over the others, and the Second Law taking precedence over the Third Law. Drama in Asimov’s robot stories usually resulted from unexpected behavior from robots obeying the Three Laws in unanticipated ways.

Mechanical Men In Movies

The information about robots presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about robots or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

The 1956 science fiction classic film “Forbidden Planet” introduced audiences to Robby the Robot. Created by Dr. Morbius with the assistance of alien technology, the enormously talented Robby served as a glorified butler to Dr. Morbius and his daughter. Robby possessed the strength to carry at least 10 tons, could converse intelligently on many subjects, and even had the ability to convert matter from one form to another. If the ship’s drunken cook served as “comic relief” in the movie, then Robby the Robot certainly fulfilled the role of “straight man.” It is worth noting that Robby was programmed with the equivalent of Asimov’s First Law of Robotics in that he could not harm a human being, even when ordered to do so by a human.

The “Star Wars” saga spanned almost three decades and introduced a whole new breed of robot. The robots R2-D2 and C-3PO were referred to as “droids” (e.g., androids, or robots with human form). However, only C-3PO had a humanoid body. R2-D2’s squat cylindrical body and non-speech communication made him more robotic than his humanoid companion.

“The Terminator” showcased the evil robot turning on his creator. In this twist of the classic Frankenstein story, the evil cyborgs (e.g., cybernetic organisms, or robots with organic parts) gained self-awareness and sought to eliminate their creators. This movie differs from the others discussed here in that the robot was specifically programmed to kill humans. However, in typical Hollywood fashion, later movies featured a robot protector sent to protect humans from the killer Terminator.

Television Tin Men

The robot from the “Lost In Space” television series remains one of the most recognizable TV robots. The unnamed Robot, like his ancestor Robby, existed to serve the Robinson family. Despite his dome-like head and cylindrical body, the Robot was portrayed as very human through his personality and extreme loyalty to his owners. He often acted as a companion to the boy Will, and is noted for his signature warning, “Danger, Will Robinson!” An incarnation of Robby the Robot actually appeared in an episode of “Lost In Space.”

More recently, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” included the android named Data as a member of the crew. Except for his unusual skin and eye color, Data appeared to be human. In fact, to be human was Data’s eventual goal. Data and his evil twin Lore, possessed great speed, strength, and supercomputer brains. In tribute to Isaac Asimov’s groundbreaking robot fiction, Data’s brain was referred to as “positronic.” Data possessed much greater latitude in his actions and choices than the other robots discussed in this article.

Conclusion

Robots and their more human-like android cousins will continue to be an integral part of science fiction in all media. They will continue to serve as humanity’s most faithful servants, most intelligent villains, and even comic relief. As robots become more common in today’s society, their influence on fictional media will continue to grow.

Those who only know one or two facts about robots can be confused by misleading information. The best way to help those who are misled is to gently correct them with the truths you’re learning here.



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