Robotics Today

Robotics Today

The world of robotics today is quickly becoming more complex. A "robot", essentially, is a combination of hardware and software that seems to function with some level of autonomy. Examples could include everything from the Boe-Bot used in this project to computer-controlled, unmanned aircraft used by the military, as well as the machines that are used to assemble cars and computers.

Since there are many different kinds of robots that are used in almoust all major industries,it is interesting to examine how the most modern robots are applied.

While robots have been used in manufacturing vehicles and computer components for years, an area of real interest, considering our project, is military robots. While Parallax does not have a major contribution in this market, iRobot does.

iRobot produces more than half a dozen industrial and government robots, including robots designed to hear and identify threats, pinpoint snipers by the report from their rifle, and even robots designed to crawl through tight places with difficult terrain.

The sniper-detection robots are particularly interesting, since our program does some very similar tasks. Our Boe-Bot can locate a nearby object and determine distance by ultrasoundl. The anti-sniper robots would have to determine the direction from which a sound came (by means of microphones), as well as the distance, and report it.

Honda also created a humanoid robot in 2000 named ASIMO. ASIMO was built with 34 degrees of freedom. Degrees of freedom refers to the number of joints in the robot, and it allows them to act like humans. ASIMO has 34 servo motors, one for each degree of freedom.With each properly executed degree of freedom the robot becomes more efficient. This robot can walk, run, climb stairs, grasp objects, respond to certain voice commands, map its environment, register stationary objects, and even conduct an orchestra. ASIMO can predict its next movement, and this allows him to walk in any direction.

ASIMO Conducting Orchestra>
ASIMO Web Page>
iRobot Gov't Robotics Page >
iRobot RedOwl Sniper Detection >
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