Week 1

Question 1

Where does the term “robot” come from?

Answer 1

From the Czech robota which means “self labour”. First used in a play by Karel Cˇapek “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (1920)

Question 2

Who was the first person to use the term robotics?

Answer 2

Isaac Asimov in a science fiction story, meaning the science and technology around robots.

Question 3

What were some of the first robots ever created.

Answer 3

Ctesibius water clock (3rd century BC)

Question 4

What were the features of the first industrial robot the Unimate Robot (1961)?

Answer 4

• Installed in GM factories
• Six joints
• Used for spot welding, casting and material handling
• Electronic control and hydraulic actuated

Question 5

What were the features of the Shakey (1972) robot?

Answer 5

• Mobile robot on a block environment
• Sensors: camera, bumpers and triangulating range finder
• Tasks: planning, route-finding and moving objects
• Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver (STRIPS)
• Origin of the Sense-Plan-Act paradigm (SPA)

Question 6

What were the features of the HILARE (1977) robot?

Answer 6

• LAAS-SNRS, France
• Used four Intel 80286 CPUs
• Sensors: Camera, sonar sensors and laser range finder
• Trajectory planning in geometric representations of space

Question 7

What are the different definitions of a robot?

Answer 7

• A goal oriented machine that can sense, plan and act (Corke, 2013)
• Automatically controlled, reprogrammable multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes (International Federation of Robotics (IFR))
• A robot is a mechanical or virtual agent, usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by a computer program or electronic circuitry (Wikipedia)

Question 8

What is a manipulator?

Answer 8

• First robots used in industry
• Static based (can’t move)
• Three main components: Links, joints and end effector (tool)
• Problems: Planning, control

Question 9

What is a mobile robot?

Answer 9

• Mostly used for research
• Can move within the environment
• locomotive system: airborne, wheeled, legged
• Problems: Localisation, control, planning, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)

Question 10

What are applications of Industrail Robots?

Answer 10

• Welding, painting, cutting and packaging
• Picking up and placing objects like the Baxter and Kuka robots
• Benefits of these types of robots are the increase of productivity and the lower costs due to the lack of humans

Question 11

What are the applications of mobile robots?

Answer 11

• Cleaning like the roomba, scooba and trilobite
• Transportation such as the robuCAB
• Defense and security such as the robuROC, FirstLook and PackBot
• Inspections with a robot such as the Alstom

Question 12

What are other applications of robots?

Answer 12

• Medical robots: Surgical, rehabilitation and prosthetics
• Social robots: Companion and caretakers
• Aerial robots: Observation, delivery and surveillance
• Mining
• Construction
• Space
• Driving
• Underwater

Question 13

What are humanoid robots capable of?

Answer 13

• Motion planning
• Learning
• Passive walking
• Football

Question 14

What were the features of the Stanford CART (1979)?

Answer 14

• Early version of visual line following
• Stereo vision vehicle control
• Moving camera
• Wasn’t in real time
• KL 10 processor (DEC)

Question 15

What were the features of behaviour-based robotics from the 1980s-1990s?

Answer 15

• An alternative to the SPA system
• Subsumption architecture
• Inspired by biology
• Paradigm shift
• They were limited to simple tasks

Question 16

Do you love me?

Answer 16

Now that I can dance