Robotics

The engineering science and technology of robots, and their design, manufacture, and use. Robotic engineering includes electronics, mechanics, artificial intelligence, sensor design, and software. Robotic engineering has led to effective applications in business, surgery, drug delivery, industry, and hazardous military, and space exploration applications. Robotics may provide economical exploration of the solar system with larger numbers of small robotic space probes or surface rovers such as the Mars Curiosity. The control system of a robot involves three distinct phases - perception, processing, and action. Sensors give information about the environment or about the robot itself. Using strategies from the field of control theory, this information is processed to calculate the appropriate signals to the actuators (motors) that move the mechanical structures. The control of a robot involves various aspects such as path planning, pattern recognition, obstacle avoidance, etc. The on-board computers may apply large knowledge banks and sophisticated algorithms to the processing, so that the robots responds to stimuli in a way that appears intelligent. Some authors have focused on possible human-robot conflicts in the future when, for example, robots possess intelligence that exceeds that of humans. Isaac Asimov proposed three laws that to avoid such conflicts: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.