1920, Czech writer karel capek: Rosen's universal robot.

The word "robot" was first put forward and translated into Chinese as "robot".

In the 1940s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a remote master-slave manipulator for handling nuclear materials.

In the early 1950s, the numerical control technology developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology prepared the robot for control.

196 1 year, Unimation company produced the first industrial robot, named "Unimate".

1962, American machinery and foundry company (AMF) trial-produced "Versatran" industrial robot, which means multi-purpose handling robot.

60' s to 70' s: Robotics has made great progress.

In 1980s, the development of computer technology promoted the development of robot technology and made the application of robots reach a new level.

In 1990s, due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence, computer science and sensor science, the research on robots was carried out at a high level.

2 1 century, the future robot technology will develop to intelligent robots with walking ability, strong autonomy to the environment and multiple sensing abilities.

Robotics

Robotics is a comprehensive subject about robots. Including mechanics, mechanics, planning system, cybernetics, sensing technology, computer science, electronics and artificial intelligence.

American robotics expert W·E· Snyder once said to engineering students: "Although only a few people can become robot designers, almost all of them will become robot users, and many of them will make the decision to buy and apply robots."

Potential customers:

Although all kinds of robots are doing different jobs in an orderly way on various occasions, this is just a scene in science fiction movies. However, with the deepening of the research on practical home robots in recent years, it is predicted that this kind of robots will be as popular as personal computers in a few years. People can use them to deal with heavy, trivial and repetitive work at home, such as cleaning and mowing the lawn.

I'm afraid not many people are willing to do the work of cleaning windows. The main exhibition hall of the famous Agneby Convention and Exhibition Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil is a steel frame structure building. In order to enhance the lighting effect, the architect designed the arched roof as an all-glass structure. In this way, it is a headache to keep the glass roof with a total area of nearly 20 thousand square meters clean. Every time after a thunderstorm, the engineering department of the convention and exhibition center has to ask 7 or 8 professional cleaners to clean it for a week, which is time-consuming and laborious. At the beginning of this year, the engineering department specially ordered two professional cleaning robots from Germany to replace workers to complete this troublesome work. These two automatic glass cleaning machine are hung on the roof, move up and down deftly along the steel frame of the roof, work independently, and can finish all the cleaning work in only one day.

Professor Brooks, director of the Laboratory of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at MIT, believes that in a few years, the application of robots in people's daily life will be similar to that of computers today. He wrote in the professional magazine "Technical Review": "I firmly believe that the development status of robots today is just like computer 1978. In the near future, home robots will enter the homes of ordinary people. They will help the owner clean the room, clean the floor, mow the lawn, and act as gatekeepers when necessary. " Carlos, head of the Institute of Automation of the University of S? o Paulo in Brazil, also said that in about 10 years, all-round robots with multiple tasks will be developed and put into mass production.

With the acceleration of the global population aging trend, one of the main tasks of future home robots is to take care of the elderly. Researchers from a German research institute have developed a home robot. It can not only help the host to do simple housework, such as preparing tableware and cleaning. And help the owner walk, remind the owner to take medicine on time and pick up things that fall on the ground.

In this regard, Carlos said: "This kind of robot can help some people, such as the elderly or the disabled, to maintain their self-care ability, but robots will never completely replace real people for nursing work." He pointed out that the robots currently designed can only work through preset programs. In the face of complex situations, they have no recognition ability and will not adjust their behavior accordingly.

At present, engineers and scientists all over the world are still deeply studying robots. Engineers and technicians from the Research and Application Group of Remote Control Machines in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, California, are working hard to develop relevant programs to enable robots to have artificial intelligence similar to human thinking processes.

Dr. Ewing, the project leader, pointed out that there are two diametrically opposite methods to control robots at present: "negotiation control" and "reaction control". Relatively speaking, the former is a traditional control method, which has advantages. It constructs the route and behavior style with mathematical precision, making the robot's actions form a whole set of steps. By performing these steps in turn, the robot can achieve the purpose of activity. Just like a blindfolded pirate looking for buried treasure: start from point A, take 36 steps to the north, then take 12 steps to the east, and then take 4 steps to the northeast to find the treasure.

However, the disadvantage of this method is that if the robot's process is disturbed for some reason (such as wrong route or missing action details), the robot must be forced to stop and accept the re-editing of the route and behavior plan. If the "rearrangement" is repeated many times, the cost will be quite expensive. In addition, if the robot encounters unexpected obstacles, such as rocks or holes, in order to ensure the safety of the robot, it is necessary to call a backup program to cancel this operation.

The "flexible control" method gets rid of the route and planning, and focuses on the observation of the surrounding environment, just like this: if there is a rock in front, slow down; If you find an object X in the ground, dig it out.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ewing has been paying attention to the research of "behavior-based control". This is a control mode that conforms to "reaction control". "Behavior-based control" allows robots to observe unpredictable and changing environments in real time, while still following the plan. It gives robots great flexibility and adapts to the ever-changing environment by changing plans like people. In space exploration, this control method shows many advantages, such as reducing the communication delay caused by operating long-distance robots from the earth.

When talking about the future of robots, Dr. Ewing said that what we are doing today does not mean that robots can think like people in the near future, but through the study of artificial intelligence, they can become easier to communicate, more independent and more efficient.