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ShipRocket-A3e6a & Robocop Messenger #1

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Automation Rising 2020 SOAR Hackathon

PROJECT: SHIPROCKET-A3E6A & ROBOCOP MESSENGER

        AUTOMATION

Automation is the creation and application of technologies to produce and deliver goods and services with minimal human intervention. The implementation of automation technologies, techniques and processes improve the efficiency, reliability, and/or speed of many tasks that were previously performed by humans. Automation – definition and meaning Automation is the use of electronics and computer-controlled devices to assume control of processes. The aim of automation is to boost efficiency and reliability. In most cases, however, automation replaces labor. In fact, economists today fear that new technology will eventually push up unemployment rates significantly.

In many manufacturing plants today, robotic assembly lines are progressively carrying out functions that humans used to do. The term ‘manufacturing’ refers to converting raw materials and components into finished goods, usually on a large scale in a factory.

Automation encompasses many key elements, systems, and job functions in virtually all industries. It is especially prevalent in manufacturing, transportation, facility operations, and utilities. Additionally, national defense systems are becoming increasingly automated.

Automation today exists in all functions within industry including integration, installation, procurement, maintenance, and even marketing and sales.

According to PC Magazine, automation by definition is:

“Replacing manual operations with electronics and computer-controlled devices. For example, ‘office automation’ replaced manual typewriters, filing cabinets and paper appointment books with computer applications.”

“Tape and disk libraries have been called ‘automation systems’ because robotic arms pick cartridges out of a stacker and move them to the drives.”

Automation

Artificial intelligence is gradually creeping into every aspect of our daily lives. Not only is it becoming more common in the workplace, but also in the home and even outdoors. Will it lead to a better quality of life and standard of living for humans, or a living hell?

Automation and the office environment Over the past forty years, information technology has completely changed the office environment. Such functions as communication, documenting, correspondence, and filing have become fully automated. Offices today even feel and look completely different from what used to exist in the 1950s.

Apart from the huge difference in decibel levels, our offices today have much less furniture. Offices used to have loud typewriters, filing cabinets, and other furniture.

If we could travel in a time machine to the 1950s, the piles of paper would amaze us.

Automation in Car Plants In the top image, I can see one human (yellow circle) and six cars. In the bottom picture, however, I can count six people working on just one car. Automation has dramatically changed manufacturing in car plants across the world. (Images: Today – autoalliance.org. 1920 – tchaunationalhistoryday.weebly.com) The average office desk used to be full of materials and equipment. Examples included folders full of paper documents, calculators, phone books, staplers, diaries, and post-it-notes. There were also Filofaxes, sticky tape, pens, and even paper maps and atlases.

While some traditional office workers still keep a number of these items in their desks, technology, and automation have eliminated the need for most of them.

How many of us today use a map made of paper to find directions compared to thirty years ago? When you wanted to find somebody’s phone number, you had to look it up in a book. You could also telephone a service and talk to a human being. Today, however, we go online or talk to a robot programmed with voice-recognition software.

Automation and flexible working Technology has shifted most office workers from a fixed 9-to-5 routine to flexible working. Thanks to the Internet, the Cloud, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, we can now work from anywhere. Not only can we work wherever we like, but also whenever we want to.

This flexibility means that people are now better able to manage their work-versus-life balance. However, we now have a new problem; we cannot switch off from work completely anymore.

Bank branches used to have lots of staff and customers in them. Today, fewer and fewer of us do our banking physically inside a branch. We do most of our banking either online or by talking to robots on the phone.

Even if we go into a branch, most of the now are full of machines and technology inside. These state-of-the-art machines allow us to complete our banking tasks. In fact, most of us could easily manage without ever having to meet a human banker face-to-face.

Automation – self driving cars Professor Henrik Christensen, from the University of California San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute, believes that babies born today will never drive. Self-driving cars will be everywhere. He also predicts that a wave of companion robots will serve as health care, home companions, assistant robots, robotic pool cleaners, and many others. Some which are reviewed on Roger Corbinetti’s site.

Automation in the manufacturing environment Manufacturing has undergone enormous changes over the past few decades. Employment in manufacturing in the advanced economies has declined considerably.

In 1996, fourteen percent of the US workforce worked in manufacturing, compared to just 8% today. That dramatic decline was in just two decades! Who knows what the percentage will be in two decades’ time!

Not all of those jobs have disappeared because of automation. Some jobs have shifted abroad to countries with cheaper labor costs. However, a sizable proportion of that loss has been due to automation.

Experts say that the rate of decline in manufacturing employment will not slow down. In fact, most of them predict the problem will get progressively and more rapidly worse.

    SHIPROCKET-A3E6A

ShipRocket-A3e6a, a product of Delta based C&P BAKING AND CATERING SERVICE LTD , is African first automated shipping software that aims to reduce e-commerce shipping to its bare bones. … You can print bulk shipping labels and ship your products to in and around the world using a single platform.

How do you ship using ShipRocket-A3e6a?

  1. The ShipRocket-A3e6a platform is hassle free and simple to use!
  2. Choose your shipment. Import all your orders with automated channel sync and select the shipment.
  3. Select courier partner. Based on your requirement select a courier partner.
  4. Pack and ship. Pack your orders, print labels and hand it over to the courier partner.
  5. Track.

The most accurate way to find out when your order will arrive is to track your package. …

  1. Track your order with a tracking number
  2. Open your Google Store order history.
  3. Find the order you want to track.
  4. Click Order details.
  5. Click Track it.

ShipRocket-A3e6a is very helpful and effective way to process orders . Panel is very user friendly and customer support is also very good so I’m giving them 5 stars

Shipping Bill or Freight Bill is the invoice raised by ShipRocket-A3e6a for all the shipped orders from your account. This invoice is raised every 2nd and 4th week of the month. It contains all the details of your shipments such as shipping date, courier partner etc.

To accept return on your products:

Go to “Returns” from the left menu and click on “All Return Orders”

To see your return requests, click on the “Return Requested” button

Now, click on “Accept” to proceed with the return request

To initiate your return order, go to “All Return Order” tab

Next, select your preferred courier partner to arrange pickup for your order

Finally, generate pickup for your order

To cancel return on your products:

If you do not want to accept the return on your products, simply click on the “cancel” button to reject the return request.

Next, share a reason for the cancellation. The same reason will be shared with your buyer.

Finally, click on “Yes, Cancel Request” to submit your reason.

USING THE SHIPROCKET-A3E6A PANEL

  1. Login to the ShipRocket-A3e6a panel.
  2. Goto Settings – Channels.
  3. Click on “Add New Channel” Button.
  4. Click on WooCommerce -> Integrate.
  5. Enter the store URL.
  6. Click on ‘Connect to Woocommerce’.
  7. The Green Icon indicates that the channel has been successfully configured. Congratulations!

Editing an Order

Once an order is created or fetched from any channel into ShipRocket-A3e6a Account , you can click on the Order ID and get into the Orders Detailed Page. You can edit the following parameters in an Order:

The tracking ID is a string like UA-000000-2. It must be included in your tracking code to tell Analytics which account and property to send data to

Table of Contents hide

1 ShipRocket-A3e6a for COD orders 1.1 Location-based COD 1.2 Verification of COD order 2 ShipRocket-A3e6a For Processing COD/Prepaid Orders 2.1 Choosing a Shipping Company 2.2 Generating AWB number 2.3 Scheduling Pick up 2.4 Getting Shipping Manifest 2.5 Order Status 3 ShipRocket-A3e6a Salient Features

ShipRocket-A3e6a, as everyone presumes, is not just a post-order fulfillment management system, it comes into action even before the customer checks out and supports until the order finally gets delivered. Follow our sequence of events that would help understand the functionality and the services of ShipRocket-A3e6a.

ShipRocket-A3e6a for COD orders

Location-based COD

At the time of placing a COD order when the customer puts her delivery pin code, ShipRocket-A3e6a runs a check through its serviceable pin-codes to check whether the same is available via any courier company or not. It accordingly hides or reveals the COD as a payment option. In case, the selected pin code is not serviceable for COD orders by any of the impaneled courier companies, only pre-paid payment options are allowed to be selected by the client.

Verification of COD order

When a customer places a COD order, a verification code is generated and sent as an SMS to the mobile number provided by the customer for verification. This functionality helps in segregating the unwanted or fake COD orders the store receives. Don’t worry, even if the COD verification fails due to any reason the order does not get cancelled or lost – it comes to your order panel with a pending verification status.

ShipRocket-A3e6a For Processing COD/Prepaid Orders

Choosing a Shipping Company

This is where the real magic starts. When you get the order in your order panel you simply need to click on the order, mark it shipped. The system automatically spits out the weight of the shipment. If volumetric weight is applicable, provide the volumetric weight and accordingly ShipRocket-A3e6a suggests the cheapest courier company providing COD or non-COD shipping services to that location. If one wishes, they can also manually overwrite in the ShipRocket-A3e6a system and select other option courier company or also manually enter the carriers name and the Air Way Bill number if any.

ShipRocket-A3e6a – India’s number 1 shipping solution

Generating AWB number

Once a courier company is selected, ShipRocket-A3e6a automatically generates the AWB number and shows it on the screen. At the same time, the AWB number gets allocated to the respective order, gets populated as the barcode on the Shipping label and the invoice. The merchant can then take a print bulk or one at a time- stick the shipping label on the box and insert the invoice inside the box.

SCHEDULING PICK UP

Ensuring same day pick-up by courier companies, we have built a unique functionality of automatic pick up generation in ShipRocket-A3e6a.

It takes just a click of a button for carriers such as Fedex, Bluedart, Aramex and 13+ other courier partners to get information about the order, location of pick up, value of the order, weight and size of the shipment. As soon as they receive these details, a notification prompt for pick-up reaches the carrier.

Getting Shipping Manifest

Manifest is the last and most important step of shipping your orders. When the pick up executive from the courier company visits your warehouse to pick up the order, you can generate a copy of the shipping manifest which contains details including the order numbers, AWB numbers, product details etc. The manifest then needs to be signed by the executive. This is your physical proof of shipment which is then handed over to the courier company.

Order Status

Post the hand-over to the courier company, the order statuses automatically change from “Ready to Ship” to “Shipped” to finally “Delivered” in your ShipRocket-A3e6a panel. At every status update a system generated SMS and Email is sent to the customer – keeping ordering experience WOW and giving that professional sense to the customer.

ShipRocket-A3e6a Salient Features

Start shipping the day you go live No minimum slab on the number of shipments Invoice and Shipping formats as per the courier company and government agencies’ standard Integrated with over 8 domestic courier companies, several local and ecommerce specific logistics partners are soon to get empaneled Also, manage your eBay and Amazon orders Certified logistics serve by Amazon India Integrated with FedEx, Aramex and DHL international to support your international orders Largest network, serving over 26000+ pre-paid and COD pincodes. Ship your COD orders too, we will collect your COD and reimburse the same to you International Ready: IP based pricing, fixed or dynamic currency conversions. Transactional SMS and email integrated One panel to view all order statuses by the customer.

Bulk Order Export

All the shipping history is saved on your panel for future reference Interested? Visit ShipRocket-A3e6a page here.

Order Cancellation After Courier/label assigning: After an order is labelled i.e a courier is assigned to the order, and you wish to cancel the order, then the same can be done from order internal page. By clicking the cancel button on the top right of the screen.

Enable Shipping For Your WooCommerce Store Make order fulfillment seamless with a powerful platform

Start Shipping

WooCommerce is known for its user-centric platform for sellers

Opt for the ShipRocket-A3e6a integration to make your store even more powerful

Deliver orders faster and deploy a seamless order fulfillment chain!

Explore ShipRocket-A3e6a

Why ShipRocket-A3e6a Is Your Ideal Shipping Partner?

Widest reach Widest reach Auto order sync and import Auto order sync and import Label White-labeled tracking page Insurance Insured shipments Pincodes Multiple pickup locations Inventory management Inventory management

Start Shipping Now

Don’t Miss Out A Single Location

Deliver to every customer who places an order at your website

ShipRocket-A3e6a will offers 26000+ serviceable pin codes in Nigeria and spread across over 220 countries abroad. Now access every corner of the world to deliver your orders hassle free!

Don’t Miss Out A Single Location Sell from anywhere Sell From Anywhere Schedule pickups from multiple locations

Let your chosen courier partners pick up products from different locations. Shipping from anywhere in the country is now a cakewalk.

Manage Inventory On One Platform An all-in-one platform for an exclusive store!

Also manage your inventory on one platform to avoid any confusion with incoming and processed orders. Hit two targets with one arrow & save extensively on processing costs

ROBOT

Robotics: Robotics is an interdisciplinary research area at the interface of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design intelligent machines that can help and assist humans in their day-to-day lives and keep everyone safe. Robotics draws on the achievement of information engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering and others.

The Shadow robot hand system Robotics develops machines that can substitute for humans and replicate human actions. Robots can be used in many situations and for many purposes, but today many are used in dangerous environments (including inspection of radioactive materials, bomb detection and deactivation), manufacturing processes, or where humans cannot survive (e.g. in space, underwater, in high heat, and clean up and containment of hazardous materials and radiation). Robots can take on any form but some are made to resemble humans in appearance. This is said to help in the acceptance of a robot in certain replicative behaviors usually performed by people. Such robots attempt to replicate walking, lifting, speech, cognition, or any other human activity. Many of today’s robots are inspired by nature, contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics.

The concept of creating robots that can operate autonomously dates back to classical times, but research into the functionality and potential uses of robots did not grow substantially until the 20th century. Throughout history, it has been frequently assumed by various scholars, inventors, engineers, and technicians that robots will one day be able to mimic human behavior and manage tasks in a human-like fashion. Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, as technological advances continue; researching, designing, and building new robots serve various practical purposes, whether domestically, commercially, or militarily. Many robots are built to do jobs that are hazardous to people, such as defusing bombs, finding survivors in unstable ruins, and exploring mines and shipwrecks. Robotics is also used in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as a teaching aid.

Robotics is a branch of engineering that involves the conception, design, manufacture, and operation of robots. This field overlaps with computer engineering, computer science (especially artificial intelligence), electronics, mechatronics, mechanical, nanotechnology and bioengineering.

Etymology The word robotics was derived from the word robot, which was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), which was published in 1920. The word robot comes from the Slavic word robota, which means slave/servant. The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people called robots, creatures who can be mistaken for humans – very similar to the modern ideas of androids. Karel Čapek himself did not coin the word. He wrote a short letter in reference to an etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary in which he named his brother Josef Čapek as its actual originator.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story “Liar!”, published in May 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction. Asimov was unaware that he was coining the term; since the science and technology of electrical devices is electronics, he assumed robotics already referred to the science and technology of robots. In some of Asimov’s other works, he states that the first use of the word robotics was in his short story Runaround (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942), where he introduced his concept of The Three Laws of Robotics. However, the original publication of “Liar!” predates that of “Runaround” by ten months, so the former is generally cited as the word’s origin.

Number of robots rising fast In the US, there were 1.2 million robots in factories and warehouses in 2012. This number jumped to 1.5 by the end of 2014.

The Brookings Institution said that by the end of 2016, there were 1.9 million robots in factories and warehouses. In other words, over a period of four years, the number of robots rose by nearly 60%.

Robots are becoming more sophisticated and skilled at performing complicated tasks. The high costs associated with transforming a labor-intensive factory to an automated one is changing. The cost differential with human workers is narrowing rapidly, to the robots’ advantage.

Put simply, it is becoming cheaper and within more business’ budgets to convert to full automation.

Artificial Intelligence Concerns The late Professor Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk have often expressed concern regarding artificial intelligence (AI). They worry about what will happen to us as AI becomes more sophisticated and smarter. Prof. Hawking said: “It [AI] would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.” The three men were nominated for Luddite of the Year, mainly because of their worries regarding AI.

Automation capital costs declining In an article – How technology is changing manufacturing – that the Brookings Institution published online, Darrel M. West wrote:

“Estimates for labor cost savings in various countries through automation and robotics now are averaging around 16 percent in industrialized nations. But places such as South Korea have seen 33 percent cost savings, and Japan has seen a 25 percent savings.”

“The convergence of these developments means that robots are helping to increase overall output and save money, but not helping to add jobs. In looking at data from 2010 to 2016, manufacturing has seen 10 to 20 percent increases in output, but only a 2 to 5 percent increase in jobs.”

Automation will dramatically change society Robots and other technologies are not only replacing workers in manufacturing, but also in teaching. The number of online courses that run automatically has exploded over the past decade.

The way we move around will soon change dramatically. It will not be long before private cars, buses, and trains have no drivers. In fact, even commercial airliners will probably have no pilots by the middle of this century.

Even professions that are super-secure today will eventually give way to robots. Robot surgeons, doctors, and veterinarians will probably run all aspects of medicine by the end of this century. In other words, by the year 2100, there might not be any human medical professionals.

By 2030, up to 861,000 UK public sector jobs may be automated, says a Deloitte and Reform report. Not only would this cut the wage bill by £17 billion, but it would also reduce the workforce by 16%.

Automation and massive unemployment There is growing concern that in the future, only those with specialized qualifications will have jobs. Perhaps skilled artists, talented musicians, and others with gifts that humans admire will be busy. However, what will happen to the rest of the population is anybody’s guess.

Robert Kenney automation quote Robert (Bobby) Kennedy (1925-1968) was an American politician from Massachusetts. He was a United States junior senator from New York from January 1965 until June 1968, when he was assassinated.

Moshe Vardi warns that over 50% of the world’s workforce will be unemployed within thirty years because of automation. Prof. Vardi is Distinguished Service Professor of Computational Engineering at Rice’s Department of Computer Science.

Not only will smart robots replace humans in the workplace, they will probably out-perform us too.

Bill Gates automation quote Bill Gates is an American business magnate, investor, author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen, which became the largest PC software company in the world. Since 1995, he has been rated by Forbes as the richest person in the world on many occasions. Regarding how humans and robots perform, Prof. Vardi said:

“We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task. I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?”

Our schools must restructure their curricula so that pupils get better training in math, engineering, technology, and science. There is a growing need for workers with *STEM skills as software developers, systems analysts, biomedical engineers, and some other fields.

HISTORY

In 1948, Norbert Wiener formulated the principles of cybernetics, the basis of practical robotics.

Fully autonomous robots only appeared in the second half of the 20th century. The first digitally operated and programmable robot, the Animate, was installed in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and stack them. Commercial and industrial robots are widespread today and used to perform jobs more cheaply, more accurately and more reliably, than humans. They are also employed in some jobs which are too dirty, dangerous, or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, assembly, packing and packaging, mining, transport, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, safety, and the mass production of consumer and industrial goods. There are many types of robots; they are used in many different environments and for many different uses. Although being very diverse in application and form, they all share three basic similarities when it comes to their construction:

Robots all have some kind of mechanical construction, a frame, form or shape designed to achieve a particular task. For example, a robot designed to travel across heavy dirt or mud, might use caterpillar tracks. The mechanical aspect is mostly the creator’s solution to completing the assigned task and dealing with the physics of the environment around it. Form follows function. Robots have electrical components which power and control the machinery. For example, the robot with caterpillar tracks would need some kind of power to move the tracker treads. That power comes in the form of electricity, which will have to travel through a wire and originate from a battery, a basic electrical circuit. Even petrol powered machines that get their power mainly from petrol still require an electric current to start the combustion process which is why most petrol powered machines like cars, have batteries. The electrical aspect of robots is used for movement (through motors), sensing (where electrical signals are used to measure things like heat, sound, position, and energy status) and operation (robots need some level of electrical energy supplied to their motors and sensors in order to activate and perform basic operations) All robots contain some level of computer programming code. A program is how a robot decides when or how to do something. In the caterpillar track example, a robot that needs to move across a muddy road may have the correct mechanical construction and receive the correct amount of power from its battery, but would not go anywhere without a program telling it to move. Programs are the core essence of a robot, it could have excellent mechanical and electrical construction, but if its program is poorly constructed its performance will be very poor (or it may not perform at all). There are three different types of robotic programs: remote control, artificial intelligence and hybrid. A robot with remote control programing has a preexisting set of commands that it will only perform if and when it receives a signal from a control source, typically a human being with a remote control. It is perhaps more appropriate to view devices controlled primarily by human commands as falling in the discipline of automation rather than robotics. Robots that use artificial intelligence interact with their environment on their own without a control source, and can determine reactions to objects and problems they encounter using their preexisting programming. Hybrid is a form of programming that incorporates both AI and RC functions in them. Applications As more and more robots are designed for specific tasks this method of classification becomes more relevant. For example, many robots are designed for assembly work, which may not be readily adaptable for other applications. They are termed as “assembly robots”. For seam welding, some suppliers provide complete welding systems with the robot i.e. the welding equipment along with other material handling facilities like turntables, etc. as an integrated unit. Such an integrated robotic system is called a “welding robot” even though its discrete manipulator unit could be adapted to a variety of tasks. Some robots are specifically designed for heavy load manipulation, and are labeled as “heavy-duty robots”.

Atlas Robot a humanoid robot designed to perform a variety of complex tasks, especially in situations unsafe for humans. It is currently developed by Boston Dynamics. Current and potential applications include:

Military robots. Industrial robots. Robots are increasingly used in manufacturing (since the 1960s). According to the Robotic Industries Association US data, in 2016 automotive industry was the main customer of industrial robots with 52% of total sales. In the auto industry, they can amount for more than half of the “labor”. There are even “lights off” factories such as an IBM keyboard manufacturing factory in Texas that was fully automated as early as 2003. Cobots (collaborative robots). Construction robots. Construction robots can be separated into three types: traditional robots, robotic arm, and robotic exoskeleton. Agricultural robots (AgRobots). The use of robots in agriculture is closely linked to the concept of AI-assisted precision agriculture and drone usage. 1996-1998 research also proved that robots can perform a herding task. Medical robots of various types (such as da Vinci Surgical System and Hospi). Kitchen automation. Commercial examples of kitchen automation are Flippy (burgers), Zume Pizza (pizza), Café X (coffee), Makr Shakr (cocktails), Frobot (frozen yogurts) and Sally (salads). Home examples are Rotimatic (flatbreads baking) and Boris (dishwasher loading). Robot combat for sport – hobby or sport event where two or more robots fight in an arena to disable each other. This has developed from a hobby in the 1990s to several TV series worldwide. Cleanup of contaminated areas, such as toxic waste or nuclear facilities. Domestic robots. Nanorobots. Swarm robotics. Autonomous drones. Sports field line marking. Components Power source Further information: Power supply and Energy storage

The Insight lander with solar panels deployed in a cleanroom At present, mostly (lead–acid) batteries are used as a power source. Many different types of batteries can be used as a power source for robots. They range from lead–acid batteries, which are safe and have relatively long shelf lives but are rather heavy compared to silver–cadmium batteries that are much smaller in volume and are currently much more expensive. Designing a battery-powered robot needs to take into account factors such as safety, cycle lifetime and weight. Generators, often some type of internal combustion engine, can also be used. However, such designs are often mechanically complex and need a fuel, require heat dissipation and are relatively heavy. A tether connecting the robot to a power supply would remove the power supply from the robot entirely. This has the advantage of saving weight and space by moving all power generation and storage components elsewhere. However, this design does come with the drawback of constantly having a cable connected to the robot, which can be difficult to manage. Potential power sources could be:

Pneumatic (compressed gases) Solar power (using the sun’s energy and converting it into electrical power) Hydraulics (liquids) Flywheel energy storage Organic garbage (through anaerobic digestion) Nuclear Actuation Main article: Actuator

A robotic leg powered by air muscles Actuators are the “muscles” of a robot, the parts which convert stored energy into movement. By far the most popular actuators are electric motors that rotate a wheel or gear, and linear actuators that control industrial robots in factories. There are some recent advances in alternative types of actuators, powered by electricity, chemicals, or compressed air.

Electric motors Main article: Electric motor The vast majority of robots use electric motors, often brushed and brushless DC motors in portable robots or AC motors in industrial robots and CNC machines. These motors are often preferred in systems with lighter loads, and where the predominant form of motion is rotational.

Linear actuators Main article: Linear actuator Various types of linear actuators move in and out instead of by spinning, and often have quicker direction changes, particularly when very large forces are needed such as with industrial robotics. They are typically powered by compressed and oxidized air (pneumatic actuator) or an oil (hydraulic actuator) Linear actuators can also be powered by electricity which usually consists of a motor and a leadscrew. Another common type is a mechanical linear actuator that is turned by hand, such as a rack and pinion on a car.

Series elastic actuators Series elastic actuation (SEA) relies on the idea of introducing intentional elasticity between the motor actuator and the load for robust force control. Due to the resultant lower reflected inertia, series elastic actuation improves safety when a robot interacts with the environment (e.g., humans or workpiece) or during collisions. Furthermore, it also provides energy efficiency and shock absorption (mechanical filtering) while reducing excessive wear on the transmission and other mechanical components. This approach has successfully been employed in various robots, particularly advanced manufacturing robots and walking humanoid robots.

The controller design of a series elastic actuator is most often performed within the passivity framework as it ensures the safety of interaction with unstructured environments. Despite its remarkable stability robustness, this framework suffers from the stringent limitations imposed on the controller which may trade-off performance. The reader is referred to the following survey which summarizes the common controller architectures for SEA along with the corresponding sufficient passivity conditions. One recent study has derived the necessary and sufficient passivity conditions for one of the most common impedance control architectures, namely velocity-sourced SEA. This work is of particular importance as it drives the non-conservative passivity bounds in an SEA scheme for the first time which allows a larger selection of control gains.

Air muscles Main article: Pneumatic artificial muscles Pneumatic artificial muscles, also known as air muscles, are special tubes that expand(typically up to 40%) when air is forced inside them. They are used in some robot applications.

Muscle wire Main article: Shape memory alloy Muscle wire, also known as shape memory alloy, Nitinol® or Flexinol® wire, is a material which contracts (under 5%) when electricity is applied. They have been used for some small robot applications.

Electroactive polymers Main article: Electroactive polymers EAPs or EPAMs are a plastic material that can contract substantially (up to 380% activation strain) from electricity, and have been used in facial muscles and arms of humanoid robots, and to enable new robots to float, fly, swim or walk.

Piezo motors Main article: Piezoelectric motor Recent alternatives to DC motors are piezo motors or ultrasonic motors. These work on a fundamentally different principle, whereby tiny piezoceramic elements, vibrating many thousands of times per second, cause linear or rotary motion. There are different mechanisms of operation; one type uses the vibration of the piezo elements to step the motor in a circle or a straight line. Another type uses the piezo elements to cause a nut to vibrate or to drive a screw. The advantages of these motors are nanometer resolution, speed, and available force for their size. These motors are already available commercially, and being used on some robots.

Elastic nanotubes Further information: Carbon nanotube Elastic nanotubes are a promising artificial muscle technology in early-stage experimental development. The absence of defects in carbon nanotubes enables these filaments to deform elastically by several percent, with energy storage levels of perhaps 10 J/cm3 for metal nanotubes. Human biceps could be replaced with an 8 mm diameter wire of this material. Such compact “muscle” might allow future robots to outrun and outjump humans.

Sensing Main articles: Robotic sensing and Robotic sensors Sensors allow robots to receive information about a certain measurement of the environment, or internal components. This is essential for robots to perform their tasks, and act upon any changes in the environment to calculate the appropriate response. They are used for various forms of measurements, to give the robots warnings about safety or malfunctions, and to provide real-time information of the task it is performing.

Touch Main article: Tactile sensor Current robotic and prosthetic hands receive far less tactile information than the human hand. Recent research has developed a tactile sensor array that mimics the mechanical properties and touch receptors of human fingertips. The sensor array is constructed as a rigid core surrounded by conductive fluid contained by an elastomeric skin. Electrodes are mounted on the surface of the rigid core and are connected to an impedance-measuring device within the core. When the artificial skin touches an object the fluid path around the electrodes is deformed, producing impedance changes that map the forces received from the object. The researchers expect that an important function of such artificial fingertips will be adjusting robotic grip on held objects.

Scientists from several European countries and Israel developed a prosthetic hand in 2009, called SmartHand, which functions like a real one—allowing patients to write with it, type on a keyboard, play piano and perform other fine movements. The prosthesis has sensors which enable the patient to sense real feeling in its fingertips.

Vision Main article: Computer vision See also: Vision processing unit Computer vision is the science and technology of machines that see. As a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory behind artificial systems that extract information from images. The image data can take many forms, such as video sequences and views from cameras.

In most practical computer vision applications, the computers are pre-programmed to solve a particular task, but methods based on learning are now becoming increasingly common.

Computer vision systems rely on image sensors which detect electromagnetic radiation which is typically in the form of either visible light or infra-red light. The sensors are designed using solid-state physics. The process by which light propagates and reflects off surfaces is explained using optics. Sophisticated image sensors even require quantum mechanics to provide a complete understanding of the image formation process. Robots can also be equipped with multiple vision sensors to be better able to compute the sense of depth in the environment. Like human eyes, robots’ “eyes” must also be able to focus on a particular area of interest, and also adjust to variations in light intensities.

There is a subfield within computer vision where artificial systems are designed to mimic the processing and behavior of biological system, at different levels of complexity. Also, some of the learning-based methods developed within computer vision have their background in biology.

Other Other common forms of sensing in robotics use lidar, radar, and sonar. Lidar measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflected light with a sensor. Radar uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. Sonar uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water.

Manipulation

KUKA industrial robot operating in a foundry

Puma, one of the first industrial robots

Baxter, a modern and versatile industrial robot developed by Rodney Brooks Further information: Mobile manipulator A definition of robotic manipulation has been provided by Matt Mason as: “manipulation refers to an agent’s control of its environment through selective contact”.

Robots need to manipulate objects; pick up, modify, destroy, or otherwise have an effect. Thus the functional end of a robot arm intended to make the effect (whether a hand, or tool) are often referred to as end effectors, while the “arm” is referred to as a manipulator. Most robot arms have replaceable end-effectors, each allowing them to perform some small range of tasks. Some have a fixed manipulator which cannot be replaced, while a few have one very general purpose manipulator, for example, a humanoid hand.

Mechanical grippers One of the most common types of end-effectors are “grippers”. In its simplest manifestation, it consists of just two fingers which can open and close to pick up and let go of a range of small objects. Fingers can for example, be made of a chain with a metal wire run through it. Hands that resemble and work more like a human hand include the Shadow Hand and the Robonaut hand. Hands that are of a mid-level complexity include the Delft hand. Mechanical grippers can come in various types, including friction and encompassing jaws. Friction jaws use all the force of the gripper to hold the object in place using friction. Encompassing jaws cradle the object in place, using less friction.

Suction end-effectors Suction end-effectors, powered by vacuum generators, are very simple astrictive devices that can hold very large loads provided the prehension surface is smooth enough to ensure suction.

Pick and place robots for electronic components and for large objects like car windscreens, often use very simple vacuum end-effectors.

Suction is a highly used type of end-effector in industry, in part because the natural compliance of soft suction end-effectors can enable a robot to be more robust in the presence of imperfect robotic perception. As an example: consider the case of a robot vision system estimates the position of a water bottle, but has 1 centimeter of error. While this may cause a rigid mechanical gripper to puncture the water bottle, the soft suction end-effector may just bend slightly and conform to the shape of the water bottle surface.

General purpose effectors Some advanced robots are beginning to use fully humanoid hands, like the Shadow Hand, MANUS, and the Schunk hand. These are highly dexterous manipulators, with as many as 20 degrees of freedom and hundreds of tactile sensors.

Locomotion Main articles: Robot locomotion and Mobile robot Rolling robots

Segway in the Robot museum in Nagoya For simplicity, most mobile robots have four wheels or a number of continuous tracks. Some researchers have tried to create more complex wheeled robots with only one or two wheels. These can have certain advantages such as greater efficiency and reduced parts, as well as allowing a robot to navigate in confined places that a four-wheeled robot would not be able to.

Two-wheeled balancing robots Balancing robots generally use a gyroscope to detect how much a robot is falling and then drive the wheels proportionally in the same direction, to counterbalance the fall at hundreds of times per second, based on the dynamics of an inverted pendulum. Many different balancing robots have been designed. While the Segway is not commonly thought of as a robot, it can be thought of as a component of a robot, when used as such Segway refer to them as RMP (Robotic Mobility Platform). An example of this use has been as NASA’s Robonaut that has been mounted on a Segway.

One-wheeled balancing robots Main article: Self-balancing unicycle A one-wheeled balancing robot is an extension of a two-wheeled balancing robot so that it can move in any 2D direction using a round ball as its only wheel. Several one-wheeled balancing robots have been designed recently, such as Carnegie Mellon University’s “Ballbot” that is the approximate height and width of a person, and Tohoku Gakuin University’s “BallIP”. Because of the long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, they have the potential to function better than other robots in environments with people.

Spherical orb robots Main article: Spherical robot Several attempts have been made in robots that are completely inside a spherical ball, either by spinning a weight inside the ball, or by rotating the outer shells of the sphere. These have also been referred to as an orb bot or a ball bot.

Six-wheeled robots Using six wheels instead of four wheels can give better traction or grip in outdoor terrain such as on rocky dirt or grass.

Tracked robots

TALON military robots used by the United States Army Tank tracks provide even more traction than a six-wheeled robot. Tracked wheels behave as if they were made of hundreds of wheels, therefore are very common for outdoor and military robots, where the robot must drive on very rough terrain. However, they are difficult to use indoors such as on carpets and smooth floors. Examples include NASA’s Urban Robot “Urbie”.

Walking applied to robots Walking is a difficult and dynamic problem to solve. Several robots have been made which can walk reliably on two legs, however, none have yet been made which are as robust as a human. There has been much study on human inspired walking, such as AMBER lab which was established in 2008 by the Mechanical Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. Many other robots have been built that walk on more than two legs, due to these robots being significantly easier to construct. Walking robots can be used for uneven terrains, which would provide better mobility and energy efficiency than other locomotion methods. Typically, robots on two legs can walk well on flat floors and can occasionally walk up stairs. None can walk over rocky, uneven terrain. Some of the methods which have been tried are:

ZMP technique Main article: Zero moment point The zero moment point (ZMP) is the algorithm used by robots such as Honda’s ASIMO. The robot’s onboard computer tries to keep the total inertial forces (the combination of Earth’s gravity and the acceleration and deceleration of walking), exactly opposed by the floor reaction force (the force of the floor pushing back on the robot’s foot). In this way, the two forces cancel out, leaving no moment (force causing the robot to rotate and fall over). However, this is not exactly how a human walks, and the difference is obvious to human observers, some of whom have pointed out that ASIMO walks as if it needs the lavatory. ASIMO’s walking algorithm is not static, and some dynamic balancing is used (see below). However, it still requires a smooth surface to walk on.

Hopping Several robots, built in the 1980s by Marc Raibert at the MIT Leg Laboratory, successfully demonstrated very dynamic walking. Initially, a robot with only one leg, and a very small foot could stay upright simply by hopping. The movement is the same as that of a person on a pogo stick. As the robot falls to one side, it would jump slightly in that direction, in order to catch itself. Soon, the algorithm was generalised to two and four legs. A bipedal robot was demonstrated running and even performing somersaults. A quadruped was also demonstrated which could trot, run, pace, and bound. For a full list of these robots, see the MIT Leg Lab Robots page.

Dynamic balancing (controlled falling) A more advanced way for a robot to walk is by using a dynamic balancing algorithm, which is potentially more robust than the Zero Moment Point technique, as it constantly monitors the robot’s motion, and places the feet in order to maintain stability. This technique was recently demonstrated by Anybots’ Dexter Robot, which is so stable, it can even jump. Another example is the TU Delft Flame.

Passive dynamics Main article: Passive dynamics Perhaps the most promising approach utilizes passive dynamics where the momentum of swinging limbs is used for greater efficiency. It has been shown that totally unpowered humanoid mechanisms can walk down a gentle slope, using only gravity to propel themselves. Using this technique, a robot need only supply a small amount of motor power to walk along a flat surface or a little more to walk up a hill. This technique promises to make walking robots at least ten times more efficient than ZMP walkers, like ASIMO.

Other methods of locomotion Flying A modern passenger airliner is essentially a flying robot, with two humans to manage it. The autopilot can control the plane for each stage of the journey, including takeoff, normal flight, and even landing. Other flying robots are uninhabited and are known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They can be smaller and lighter without a human pilot on board, and fly into dangerous territory for military surveillance missions. Some can even fire on targets under command. UAVs are also being developed which can fire on targets automatically, without the need for a command from a human. Other flying robots include cruise missiles, the Entomopter, and the Epson micro helicopter robot. Robots such as the Air Penguin, Air Ray, and Air Jelly have lighter-than-air bodies, propelled by paddles, and guided by sonar.

Snaking

Two robot snakes. Left one has 64 motors (with 2 degrees of freedom per segment), the right one 10. Several snake robots have been successfully developed. Mimicking the way real snakes move, these robots can navigate very confined spaces, meaning they may one day be used to search for people trapped in collapsed buildings. The Japanese ACM-R5 snake robot can even navigate both on land and in water.

Skating A small number of skating robots have been developed, one of which is a multi-mode walking and skating device. It has four legs, with unpowered wheels, which can either step or roll. Another robot, Plen, can use a miniature skateboard or roller-skates, and skate across a desktop.

Capuchin, a climbing robot Climbing Several different approaches have been used to develop robots that have the ability to climb vertical surfaces. One approach mimics the movements of a human climber on a wall with protrusions; adjusting the center of mass and moving each limb in turn to gain leverage. An example of this is Capuchin, built by Dr. Ruixiang Zhang at Stanford University, California. Another approach uses the specialized toe pad method of wall-climbing geckoes, which can run on smooth surfaces such as vertical glass. Examples of this approach include Wallbot and Stickybot.

China’s Technology Daily reported on 15 November 2008, that Dr. Li Hiu Yeung and his research group of New Concept Aircraft (Zhuhai) Co., Ltd. Had successfully developed a bionic gecko robot named “Speedy Freelander”. According to Dr. Yeung, the gecko robot could rapidly climb up and down a variety of building walls, navigate through ground and wall fissures, and walk upside-down on the ceiling. It was also able to adapt to the surfaces of smooth glass, rough, sticky or dusty walls as well as various types of metallic materials. It could also identify and circumvent obstacles automatically. Its flexibility and speed were comparable to a natural gecko. A third approach is to mimic the motion of a snake climbing a pole.

Swimming (Piscine) It is calculated that when swimming some fish can achieve a propulsive efficiency greater than 90%. Furthermore, they can accelerate and maneuver far better than any man-made boat or submarine, and produce less noise and water disturbance. Therefore, many researchers studying underwater robots would like to copy this type of locomotion. Notable examples are the Essex University Computer Science Robotic Fish G9, and the Robot Tuna built by the Institute of Field Robotics, to analyze and mathematically model thunniform motion. The Aqua Penguin, designed and built by Festo of Germany, copies the streamlined shape and propulsion by front “flippers” of penguins. Festo have also built the Aqua Ray and Aqua Jelly, which emulate the locomotion of manta ray, and jellyfish, respectively.

Robotic Fish: iSplash-II In 2014 iSplash-II was developed by PhD student Richard James Clapham and Prof. Huosheng Hu at Essex University. It was the first robotic fish capable of outperforming real carangiform fish in terms of average maximum velocity (measured in body lengths/ second) and endurance, the duration that top speed is maintained. This build attained swimming speeds of 11.6BL/s (i.e. 3.7 m/s). The first build, iSplash-I (2014) was the first robotic platform to apply a full-body length carangiform swimming motion which was found to increase swimming speed by 27% over the traditional approach of a posterior confined waveform.

Sailing

The autonomous sailboat robot Vaimos Sailboat robots have also been developed in order to make measurements at the surface of the ocean. A typical sailboat robot is Vaimos built by IFREMER and ENSTA-Bretagne. Since the propulsion of sailboat robots uses the wind, the energy of the batteries is only used for the computer, for the communication and for the actuators (to tune the rudder and the sail). If the robot is equipped with solar panels, the robot could theoretically navigate forever. The two main competitions of sailboat robots are WRSC, which takes place every year in Europe, and Sailbot.

Environmental interaction and navigation Main articles: Robotic mapping and Robotic navigation

Radar, GPS, and lidar, are all combined to provide proper navigation and obstacle avoidance (vehicle developed for 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge) Though a significant percentage of robots in commission today are either human controlled or operate in a static environment, there is an increasing interest in robots that can operate autonomously in a dynamic environment. These robots require some combination of navigation hardware and software in order to traverse their environment. In particular, unforeseen events (e.g. people and other obstacles that are not stationary) can cause problems or collisions. Some highly advanced robots such as ASIMO and Meinü robot have particularly good robot navigation hardware and software. Also, self-controlled cars, Ernst Dickmanns’ driverless car, and the entries in the DARPA Grand Challenge, are capable of sensing the environment well and subsequently making navigational decisions based on this information, including by a swarm of autonomous robots. Most of these robots employ a GPS navigation device with waypoints, along with radar, sometimes combined with other sensory data such as lidar, video cameras, and inertial guidance systems for better navigation between waypoints.

Human-robot interaction Main article: Human-robot interaction

Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions. The state of the art in sensory intelligence for robots will have to progress through several orders of magnitude if we want the robots working in our homes to go beyond vacuum-cleaning the floors. If robots are to work effectively in homes and other non-industrial environments, the way they are instructed to perform their jobs, and especially how they will be told to stop will be of critical importance. The people who interact with them may have little or no training in robotics, and so any interface will need to be extremely intuitive. Science fiction authors also typically assume that robots will eventually be capable of communicating with humans through speech, gestures, and facial expressions, rather than a command-line interface. Although speech would be the most natural way for the human to communicate, it is unnatural for the robot. It will probably be a long time before robots interact as naturally as the fictional C-3PO, or Data of Star Trek, Next Generation.

Speech recognition Main article: Speech recognition Interpreting the continuous flow of sounds coming from a human, in real time, is a difficult task for a computer, mostly because of the great variability of speech. The same word, spoken by the same person may sound different depending on local acoustics, volume, the previous word, whether or not the speaker has a cold, etc.. It becomes even harder when the speaker has a different accent. Nevertheless, great strides have been made in the field since Davis, Biddulph, and Balashek designed the first “voice input system” which recognized “ten digits spoken by a single user with 100% accuracy” in 1952. Currently, the best systems can recognize continuous, natural speech, up to 160 words per minute, with an accuracy of 95%. With the help of artificial intelligence, machines nowadays can use people’s voice to identify their emotions such as satisfied or angry

Robotic voice Other hurdles exist when allowing the robot to use voice for interacting with humans. For social reasons, synthetic voice proves suboptimal as a communication medium, making it necessary to develop the emotional component of robotic voice through various techniques. An advantage of diphonic branching is the emotion that the robot is programmed to project, can be carried on the voice tape, or phoneme, already pre-programmed onto the voice media. One of the earliest examples is a teaching robot named leachim developed in 1974 by Michael J. Freeman. Leachim was able to convert digital memory to rudimentary verbal speech on pre-recorded computer discs. It was programmed to teach students in The Bronx, New York.

Gestures Further information: Gesture recognition The SCORBOT-ER 4u educational robot Robotics engineers design robots, maintain them, develop new applications for them, and conduct research to expand the potential of robotics. Robots have become a popular educational tool in some middle and high schools, particularly in parts of the USA, as well as in numerous youth summer camps, raising interest in programming, artificial intelligence, and robotics among students.

Facial expression Further information: Emotion recognition Facial expressions can provide rapid feedback on the progress of a dialog between two humans, and soon may be able to do the same for humans and robots. Robotic faces have been constructed by Hanson Robotics using their elastic polymer called Frubber, allowing a large number of facial expressions due to the elasticity of the rubber facial coating and embedded subsurface motors (servos). The coating and servos are built on a metal skull. A robot should know how to approach a human, judging by their facial expression and body language. Whether the person is happy, frightened, or crazy-looking affects the type of interaction expected of the robot. Likewise, robots like Kismet and the more recent addition, Nexi can produce a range of facial expressions, allowing it to have meaningful social exchanges with humans.

Artificial emotions Artificial emotions can also be generated, composed of a sequence of facial expressions and/or gestures. As can be seen from the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the programming of these artificial emotions is complex and requires a large amount of human observation. To simplify this programming in the movie, presets were created together with a special software program. This decreased the amount of time needed to make the film. These presets could possibly be transferred for use in real-life robots.

Personality Many of the robots of science fiction have a personality, something which may or may not be desirable in the commercial robots of the future. Nevertheless, researchers are trying to create robots which appear to have a personality: i.e. they use sounds, facial expressions, and body language to try to convey an internal state, which may be joy, sadness, or fear. One commercial example is Pleo, a toy robot dinosaur, which can exhibit several apparent emotions.

Social Intelligence The Socially Intelligent Machines Lab of the Georgia Institute of Technology researches new concepts of guided teaching interaction with robots. The aim of the projects is a social robot that learns task and goals from human demonstrations without prior knowledge of high-level concepts. These new concepts are grounded from low-level continuous sensor data through unsupervised learning, and task goals are subsequently learned using a Bayesian approach. These concepts can be used to transfer knowledge to future tasks, resulting in faster learning of those tasks. The results are demonstrated by the robot Curi who can scoop some pasta from a pot onto a plate and serve the sauce on top.

Control

Puppet Magnus, a robot-manipulated marionette with complex control systems.

RuBot II can manually resolve Rubik’s cubes. Further information: Control system The mechanical structure of a robot must be controlled to perform tasks. The control of a robot involves three distinct phases – perception, processing, and action (robotic paradigms). Sensors give information about the environment or the robot itself (e.g. the position of its joints or its end effector). This information is then processed to be stored or transmitted and to calculate the appropriate signals to the actuators (motors) which move the mechanical.

The processing phase can range in complexity. At a reactive level, it may translate raw sensor information directly into actuator commands. Sensor fusion may first be used to estimate parameters of interest (e.g. the position of the robot’s gripper) from noisy sensor data. An immediate task (such as moving the gripper in a certain direction) is inferred from these estimates. Techniques from control theory convert the task into commands that drive the actuators.

At longer time scales or with more sophisticated tasks, the robot may need to build and reason with a “cognitive” model. Cognitive models try to represent the robot, the world, and how they interact. Pattern recognition and computer vision can be used to track objects. Mapping techniques can be used to build maps of the world. Finally, motion planning and other artificial intelligence techniques may be used to figure out how to act. For example, a planner may figure out how to achieve a task without hitting obstacles, falling over, etc.

Autonomy levels

TOPIO, a humanoid robot, played ping pong at Tokyo IREX 2009. Control systems may also have varying levels of autonomy.

Direct interaction is used for haptic or tele operated devices, and the human has nearly complete control over the robot’s motion. Operator-assist modes have the operator commanding medium-to-high-level tasks, with the robot automatically figuring out how to achieve them. An autonomous robot may go without human interaction for extended periods of time . Higher levels of autonomy do not necessarily require more complex cognitive capabilities. For example, robots in assembly plants are completely autonomous but operate in a fixed pattern. Another classification takes into account the interaction between human control and the machine motions.

Teleoperation. A human controls each movement, each machine actuator change is specified by the operator. Supervisory. A human specifies general moves or position changes and the machine decides specific movements of its actuators. Task-level autonomy. The operator specifies only the task and the robot manages itself to complete it. Full autonomy. The machine will create and complete all its tasks without

Career training Universities like Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) offer bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in the field of robotics. Vocational schools offer robotics training aimed at careers in robotics.

Certification The Robotics Certification Standards Alliance (RCSA) is an international robotics certification authority that confers various industry- and educational-related robotics certifications.

Summer robotics camp Several national summer camp programs include robotics as part of their core curriculum. In addition, youth summer robotics programs are frequently offered by celebrated museums and institutions.

Robotics competitions Main article: Robot competition There are many competitions around the globe. The SeaPerch curriculum is aimed as students of all ages. This is a short list of competition examples; for a more complete list see Robot competition.

Competitions for Younger Children The FIRST organization offers the FIRST Lego League Jr. competitions for younger children. This competition’s goal is to offer younger children an opportunity to start learning about science and technology. Children in this competition build Lego models and have the option of using the Lego WeDo robotics kit.

Competitions for Children Ages 9-14 One of the most important competitions is the FLL or FIRST Lego League. The idea of this specific competition is that kids start developing knowledge and getting into robotics while playing with Lego since they are nine years old. This competition is associated with National Instruments. Children use Lego Mind storms to solve autonomous robotics challenges in this competition.

Competitions for Teenagers Main article: FIRST The FIRST Tech Challenge is designed for intermediate students, as a transition from the FIRST Lego League to the FIRST Robotics Competition.

The FIRST Robotics Competition focuses more on mechanical design, with a specific game being played each year. Robots are built specifically for that year’s game. In match play, the robot moves autonomously during the first 15 seconds of the game (although certain years such as 2019’s Deep Space change this rule), and is manually operated for the rest of the match.

Competitions for Older Students The various Robocop competitions include teams of teenagers and university students. These competitions focus on soccer competitions with different types of robots, dance competitions, and urban search and rescue competitions. All of the robots in these competitions must be autonomous. Some of these competitions focus on simulated robots.

AUVSI runs competitions for flying robots, robot boats, and underwater robots.

The Student AUV Competition Europe (SAUC-E) mainly attracts undergraduate and graduate student teams. As in the AUVSI competitions, the robots must be fully autonomous while they are participating in the competition.

The Microtransat Challenge is a competition to sail a boat across the Atlantic Ocean.

Competitions Open to Anyone RoboGames is open to anyone wishing to compete in their over 50 categories of robot competitions.

Federation of International Robot-soccer Association holds the FIRA World Cup competitions. There are flying robot competitions, robot soccer competitions, and other challenges, including weightlifting barbells made from dowels and CDs.

Robotics afterschool programs Many schools across the country are beginning to add robotics programs to their after school curriculum. Some major programs for afterschool robotics include FIRST Robotics Competition, Botball and B.E.S.T. Robotics. Robotics competitions often include aspects of business and marketing as well as engineering and design.

The Lego company began a program for children to learn and get excited about robotics at a young age.

Decolonial Educational Robotics Decolonial Educational Robotics is a branch of Decolonial Technology, and Decolonial A.I., practiced in various places around the world. This methodology is summarized in pedagogical theories and practices such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Montessori methods. And it aims at teaching robotics from the local culture, to pluralize and mix technological knowledge.

Employment

A robot technician builds small all-terrain robots. (Courtesy: MobileRobots Inc) Main article: Technological unemployment Robotics is an essential component in many modern manufacturing environments. As factories increase their use of robots, the number of robotics–related jobs grow and have been observed to be steadily rising. The employment of robots in industries has increased productivity and efficiency savings and is typically seen as a long term investment for benefactors. A paper by Michael Osborne and Carl Benedikt Frey found that 47 per cent of US jobs are at risk to automation “over some unspecified number of years”. These claims have been criticized on the ground that social policy, not AI, causes unemployment. In a 2016 article in The Guardian, Stephen Hawking stated “The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining”.

Occupational safety and health implications Main article: Workplace robotics safety A discussion paper drawn up by EU-OSHA highlights how the spread of robotics presents both opportunities and challenges for occupational safety and health (OSH).

The greatest OSH benefits stemming from the wider use of robotics should be substitution for people working in unhealthy or dangerous environments. In space, defence, security, or the nuclear industry, but also in logistics, maintenance, and inspection, autonomous robots are particularly useful in replacing human workers performing dirty, dull or unsafe tasks, thus avoiding workers’ exposures to hazardous agents and conditions and reducing physical, ergonomic and psychosocial risks. For example, robots are already used to perform repetitive and monotonous tasks, to handle radioactive material or to work in explosive atmospheres. In the future, many other highly repetitive, risky or unpleasant tasks will be performed by robots in a variety of sectors like agriculture, construction, transport, healthcare, firefighting or cleaning services.

Despite these advances, there are certain skills to which humans will be better suited than machines for some time to come and the question is how to achieve the best combination of human and robot skills. The advantages of robotics include heavy-duty jobs with precision and repeatability, whereas the advantages of humans include creativity, decision-making, flexibility, and adaptability. This need to combine optimal skills has resulted in collaborative robots and humans sharing a common workspace more closely and led to the development of new approaches and standards to guarantee the safety of the “man-robot merger”. Some European countries are including robotics in their national programmes and trying to promote a safe and flexible co-operation between robots and operators to achieve better productivity. For example, the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) organises annual workshops on the topic “human-robot collaboration”.

In the future, co-operation between robots and humans will be diversified, with robots increasing their autonomy and human-robot collaboration reaching completely new forms. Current approaches and technical standards aiming to protect employees from the risk of working with collaborative robots will have to be revised.

Prosper128 commented 4 years ago

Interesting