Artificial Intelligence and Real Robots

AI and Real Robots

Introduction. Many artificial intelligence (AI) experts are predicting that by the middle of this century, intelligent machines will be all around us. Right now these machines like robots, already touch our lives. Automobiles, electronic devices, and aircraft are assembled and tested with the help of different kinds of robotic machines. If computers saved the world from information explosion, intelligent machines so made, that computers have affordable cost for students and many people. Practically all machines around us are rapidly becoming "intelligent" with help of the intelligent applications. Heavy industry, transportation, agriculture, the military enforcement, and even entertainments are just areas more recently benefiting from computer systems and intelligent machines. AI and robotic industry revenue is now measured by billions of dollars. With the vast advancements in technology , we are now closer to a solution to that complex problem of creating a humanized robot than we ever have been. It is difficult to predict when this will happened but it is very likely to happen this century.

What is a robot? Czech dramatist Karel Capek invented the term "robot" in 1917 to describe the mechanical people in his science fiction drama R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). His intelligent machines, intended as servants for their human creators, end up taking over the world and destroying humanity.

The prototypes of today's robots was created during the Victoria era - the Steam Man (1865), Electric Man (1885), Automatic Man (1890-1900), and even robot-soldier Boilerplate (1893). ( See: http://www.bigredhair.com/robots).

Robots are of great interest to AI researchers - they offer many ways for computers to interact with the real world. In general, the robot is a general-purpose machine with an embedded computer device capable of emulating certain human-like characteristics such as judgment, reasoning, learning, vision, etc. Robots range from small, miniature machines, to large constructions , usually with a numerical control system, that gives them some degree of autonomous control. Robots ,which may be mobile or stationary, have been incorporated into a wide range of industries.

Intelligent Industrial robots have been used for welding, painting, material handling, assembly, spray coating, inspection, etc. Long time industrial robots were more like automated machines used where the jobs are repetitively, dirty, dangerous, or very difficult. The intelligent robots have embedded controllers with artificial intelligence control programs that can solve the problem of adapting , reasoning, and responding to changes in the robot's environment. Now almost one million industrial robots are in use around the world. Intelligent industrial robots had the following advantages: reduce manufacturing costs, improve product quality, increase human resource productivity , improve time to manufacture, increase manufacturing flexibility, increase capital resource productivity.

Fanuc LTD developed Robots and Robomachines. For example, robot R-2000iA is a multi-purpose, intelligent robot integrating mechanic, electronic and artificial intelligence technologies; tLR Mates are multi-purpose, intelligent mini-robots the size of a human arm. The product line of Robomachines includes ROBOSHOT (Electric Injection Molding Machines), ROBOCUT (wire-cut EDMs), ROBODRILL (CNC Drills) and ROBOnano Ui (Super Nano Machine).
Genesis Systems Group is the largest robotic arc welding work cell manufacturer in North America, with over 1600 robotic welding system installations.
Xerox PARC Modular Robotic Systems. Modular Reconfigurable Robotics is one approach to building robots for various complex tasks. Instead of designing a new and different mechanical robot for each task, the user just builds many copies of one simple module. The module can't do much by itself, but when many of them are connected together, the result is a system that can do complex tasks. In fact, a modular robot can even reconfigure itself - change its shape by moving its modules around - to meet the demands of different tasks or different working environments.

For more information see and the book "Artificial intelligence Around Us".