Without question, the coolest tech on display at ITU Telecom World 2006 was the futuristic visions of the home. Especially when they involved robots. Japanese company ACCESS, for example, showcased the Speecys MI-RAI-RT robot (left) compliant with Digital Living Network Alliance home networking specs that connects to your Wi-Fi home network and retrieves news and other info, plays educational games with kids, and does a robot dance that can be synchronized with streaming music and live TV.

Without question, the coolest tech on display at ITU Telecom World 2006 was the futuristic visions of the home. Especially when they involved robots. Japanese company ACCESS, for example, showcased the Speecys MI-RAI-RT robot (left) compliant with Digital Living Network Alliance home networking specs that connects to your Wi-Fi home network and retrieves news and other info, plays educational games with kids, and does a robot dance that can be synchronized with streaming music and live TV.

Industrial Robot

Background

Industrial robots are mechanical devices which, to a certain degree, replicate human motions. They are used whenever there is a need to reduce the danger to a human, provide more strength or accuracy than a human, or when continuous operation is required. Most robots are stationary, but some move throughout the workplace delivering materials and supplies.

Many people think of robots as the humanoid-type monsters that are seen in science fiction and fantasy movies. While we may someday have the technical ability to produce such a machine, today's robots are actually quite simple devices. Motions that we take for granted—picking up a coin from the table, for instance—are considerably more difficult for a robot. Our brain processes thousands of variable bits of data from our eyes to instruct our arm, wrist, hand, and fingers to reach, grasp, and pick up the coin. Even the tactile feel of the coin constantly updates our brain to provide just enough finger pressure to grip the coin securely. Any variations in position are effortlessly compensated for in our brain. To easily and economically program an industrial robot to perform the same task, many of these variables must be restricted or eliminated. Position, reach, weight, and grasp should remain as consistent as possible so that variations do not result in missing or dropping the object. The computer that controls the robot must be programmed by a technician, to "teach" the machine to complete the motion. The areas where robots perform better than humans are in accuracy and repeatability. While some people could pick up the coin with similar motions each time, the robot can perform the operation with exactly the same motions without tiring. Many robots can repeat motions with an accuracy of a few thousandths of an inch and operate 24 hours a day. Because of this tireless, accurate work, robots are a growing segment of industrial equipment purchases. Most are used for repetitive painting and welding operations, while others, known as pick-and-place robots, are used to lift and place products into machines and packages.

History

Robots, or "robotics," are a segment of the broader science of automation. Automation uses machines and computers which can learn or compensate for varying conditions of operation. The term robot can be traced to the Czech word robota, which means compulsory labor. The term first appeared in 1921 in the play "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech dramatist Karel Capek. The play described humanoid robots that destroyed their human makers—much the same plot of some modern science fiction thrillers.

Practical robots were first attempted after the development of the computer. In the late 1960s, the Stanford Research Institute designed and built an experimental robot called "SHAKEY." Using a television camera and a computer, this machine was capable of moving and arranging blocks into stacks. General Motors financed a program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s to develop an automated robot for assembly purposes. Here, researcher Victor Scheinman invented the PUMA (programmable universal manipulator for assembly), and the entry of robots into American industry began.

Raw Materials

Robots are mostly built of common materials. Some specialized robots for clean room applications, the space program, or other "high tech" projects may use titanium metal and structural composites of carbon fibers. The operating environment and strength required are major factors in material selection.

Steel, cast iron, and aluminum are most often used for the arms and bases of robots. If the robot is mobile, they usually equip them with rubber tires for quiet operation and a positive grip on the floor. Robots contain a significant amount of electronics and wiring, and some are radio or laser controlled. The cylinders and other motion-generating mechanisms contain hydraulic oil or pressurized air. Hoses of silicone, rubber, and braided stainless steel connect these mechanisms to their control valves. To protect the robot from the environment, some exposed areas are covered with flexible neoprene shields and collapsible bellows. Electric motors and linear drives are purchased from automation suppliers along with the controller, or "brain." Controllers are housed in steel electrical cabinets located near the robot's work area or carried on board the robot itself.

Robotic Vehicles

From the late 1980s onward, robotic vehicles have become an increasingly important component of security operations and related activities. They can be used to gather information in areas where a human could not safely go and undertake tasks a human could not safely perform. Robotic vehicles can be used, for instance, in underwater minesweeping, and in sites contaminated by nuclear, biological, or chemical materials. The use of robotic vehicles on scientific expeditions to such inhospitable locales as the polar ice cap and the surface of Mars portends a variety of applications for intelligence gathering. Robotic technology also has uses in energy harvesting, or the gathering of energy from ambient sources such as sunlight, wind, or barometric fluctuations.

Robotic Operation

A 1994 article in The Industrial Robot identified five parameters or "subtasks" of robotic operation: localization, motion control, mapping, path planning, and communication with the operating station. The subtask of localization is a matter highly analogous to human movement. If a person does not know his or her location, that person cannot know where he or she is going; in order to stay on the right path, it is necessary to receive continual data regarding the environment. For the human mind, these skills are largely automatic—one does not have to think about walking around an obstacle, for instance—but for the robot, course correction must be built into the overall operating system.

Closely related to the problem of localization is that of motion control. Some robots operate on set paths analogous to a railroad track, but as technology has progressed, scientists have developed means that will allow robotic vehicles to operate in a less modified environment, using navigational markers. These markers are reflective targets that serve as beacons, allowing the robotic vehicle to correct its course when it strays from a desired path. Efforts to make these vehicles capable of operating in a completely unrestricted environment are ongoing.

Also closely related to localization is the issue of mapping the environment—a function that, once again, is automatic for humans. Robots use visual, ultrasonic, and touch sensors. More sophisticated machines made for operating in an outdoor locale have means of navigating by visual methods using focus-enhancing technology.

Robotic scientists are using ever more sophisticated means of navigation. Among these is the use of a camera to provide data allowing the home station to implement course correction measures. The Global Positioning System, or GPS, also offers a method of aiding navigation in large, open environments. Still more complex are various techniques applying teleoperation through virtual-reality systems.

Path planning and communication. Path planning involves addressing the problem of minimizing the output of time or energy required to reach a certain goal. In spatial terms, path planning involves helping the robot to find the shortest possible distance between two points. Temporal or time-based path planning may be more challenging in view of unpredictable inputs from the environment.

Finally, there is the matter of communication with the home station, a problem encountered by humans in tasks ranging from intelligence gathering to space travel. In addition to receiving information on changing courses or tasks, robots undertaking sophisticated activities may need to send back video data or other forms of intelligence.

Uses for Robotic Vehicles

The applications, and potential applications, of robotic vehicles are myriad. Within the realm of industry, they can be used for everything from moving containers in ports (an application demonstrated in 1994) to clearing snow off of airport runways. On a consumer level, robotic technology can be employed in wheelchairs and in cleaning homes or offices.

In the realm of scientific study, robotic vehicles provide a means of conducting research in environments that

A British Army robot inspects a suspect vehicle for explosives outside the Europa Hotel in Belfast, Northern Ireland. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS .

are either presently or forever inaccessible to humans. The use of a robotic vehicle to collect data during the 1997 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mars Pathfinder Expedition gained widespread attention, but scientists also use robots much closer to home. Small, submarine-like robots known as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have in some cases taken the place of acoustic remote-sensing technology to map seabed topography. They also offer promise in areas impenetrable to more traditional methods—for instance, for mapping hydrothermal vents beneath the Arctic Ocean.

The cardiac surgeon wipes his brow, squirts a couple of eye drops, turns off his computer and throws the switch on his robot — another bypass surgery is complete. Within four hours the patient will be visiting with friends and relatives in the waiting room.

Robotic assisted surgery is a “here and now” leading-edge technology that should realize widespread deployment in the foreseeable future. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved computer-controlled robotic surgery for gall bladder, abdominal, prostate, colorectal and esophageal procedures representing 3.5 million surgical incidents per year. The MIT Technology Review and Scientific American magazines in recent months featured stories on robotic surgery.

Cardiac surgery is not without risks. The likelihood of death after surgery increases from a 1.1 percent chance between the ages of 20-50 to 7.2 percent between ages 81-90. One-third of all heart surgery patients experience some complication. Of the patients beyond age 65, 4 percent died in the hospital, 4 percent were discharged to a nursing home, and 10 percent spent more than two weeks recovering in the hospital. Memory loss, physical weakness and depression often delay recovery for months.

Robotic surgery offers significant benefits to patients and surgeons. Robotic bypass surgery patients are returning home the day following surgery. That can represent a significant cost savings when you consider the standard hospital stay for a heart patient is at least a week at $1,400 per day. Since the procedure is minimally invasive, a greater number of high-risk patients can be treated with reduced trauma. In the case of cardiac patients, it means the surgeon will not “crack open” the patient’s chest cavity nor place the patient on a heart-lung machine, which offers its own set of risks. In 1994, fewer than one in 100 heart operations was performed without heart-lung machines. This year the number is expected to be 15 percent with a 50 percent rate projected by 2005.

Physicians are pleased with the technology. They report the robotic systems are more accurate due to the “virtual steadiness” of the robotic hands, and since it requires no standing over the patient for hours, robotic surgery is less stressful and fatiguing for attending surgeons. As a result, the surgery team is better prepared to successfully deal with emergency medical situations.

Two California companies, Intuitive Surgical and Computer Motion, have robotic systems on FDA fast-track approval for cardiac procedures. They expect commercial approval this year. Operating room economics will ultimately determine how widely the technology will be deployed. The $750,000 robots must demonstrate not only superior or equal physical outcomes but also increased profit margins. Hospitals have about the same profit margin as grocery stores — 2.5 percent — and heart surgeries represent their biggest moneymaker, with more than 400,000 procedures per year at $25,000 to $40,000 each.

The robotic systems consist of a computer-mediated surgical workstation with a high-quality video display and hand-input devices, a wired network to communicate the surgeon’s gestures, and a cart bearing the robotic arms. In addition to a 3-D operating environment, the system offers some force feedback to give the surgeon a sense or feel of working with tissue and sutures.

Currently, the surgeon and robotic device are in the same room, but in theory they could be time zones apart.

However, significant distance makes a difference due to a disorienting lag time between the surgeon’s hand movement and the actions of the robot. Thirty miles of wireless transmission and 200 miles of cable connection appear to be the operating limits. Increased broadband will eventually accelerate telesurgery and stimulate structural changes in the medical industry as patients access world-class surgical specialists around the world. The next enhancement of robotic surgery could be voice recognition software that allows the physician to verbally instruct the robot through some of the basic movements.

Sony’s Aibo robot dog continues to garner headlines and TV appearances at a rate that would make a media-hungry wannabe Hollywood starlet green with envy. The public’s appetite for the cute mechanical mutt has made it the most high-profile real robot ever, although its big-screen counterparts do not need to worry yet about being bumped off the number one slot.

But R2D2, everyone’s favourite motorised dustbin from Star Wars, now has a close cousin in the form of a robotic petrol pump that enables drivers to self-service without leaving their cars. The system, design for Shell Oil by HR Textron, is undergoing trials in a suburb of Indianapolis for which car users are paying an extra $1 per tank for the privilege of being served by a robot.

According to the team behind the SmartPump, the system promises a future where you’ll never need to brave the elements on those cold winter evenings to fill up your tank. Moreover, Shell claims that mothers will not have to leave children unattended in the car while topping up the tank.

In order to be compatible with the robot pump, your car will need to be fitted with a coded chip which contains unique vehicle information. Your car will also need to be equipped with a special spring-loaded petrol cap.

As the car approaches the SmartPump, a reader scans the chip to determine the type of vehicle to fuel in order that the robot knows the position of the petrol cap. The motorist then drives up to a terminal, which adjusts to the height of the car’s window, swipes a credit card and selects the preferred fuel grade. The robotic arm fills the tank accordingly.

Robot arm technology is also being employed for more precise applications: delicate spine surgery. The system, developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany, is capable of operating to high levels of accuracy and is steadier than a surgeon’s hand and also more precise.

For example, it is capable of inserting screws into the vertebrae to an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre. The screws are then used to attach rigid bars down the spine in order to stabilise the spinal column. Until now, doctors have been using X-ray images to ensure that the screws are inserted as precisely as possible. Unfortunately, X-rays can only be taken at intervals of several minutes.

Dr Peter Weber of the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering, said: “Until now, there was no way to monitor the insertion of the screws in real time.” Researchers have tackled the problem by linking the robot to a navigation system using ultrasound. This allows the robot surgeon to monitor the insertion of the screws by taking ultrasound measurements.

The surgical robot is being put through its paces on dummy patients after which Dr Weber believes that the system will be used to perform operations - some of which are currently impossible - on cervical vertebrae in the nec.

These sorts of applications conform to the public’s image of robots - performing human-type operations in the macro world. But there is a growing use of the robots in the micro world.

For example, Denso has just unveiled its Micro-Inspection Robot, which has a diameter of just 7mm and an overall length of 27mm. This tiny inspection device has been designed to check the inside of pipes searching for cracks in their walls using an eddy current sensor.

The robot is capable of operating in pipes as small as 8mm in diameter using an piezoelectric biomorph actuator which propels it along at around 10mm/s. While this device operates via a wire link to its power supply, Denso has also developed a wireless robot whose power is supplied from outside via microwave energy.

Kunihiko Hara, director of Denso’s research laboratories and corporate R&D, said: “Small creatures have a special mechanism optimised for moving effectively with a minimum of energy, allowing them to enjoy rotary and parallel motions beyond our knowledge. Investigations into micro-technology currently in progress may lead to an unexpected discovery in the mechanism of motion and movement.

Continuing developments in robot devices and systems are producing a range of machines that perform dedicated tasks too difficult or routine for human to perform with anything close to the same degree of accuracy or reliability as their machine replacements. But despite the increasing sophistication of robots, the day when Mastermind is won by a machine is still a long way off - unless, of course, someone out there has developed a robot taxi driver.

On a smooth surface, rolling wheels are the best way to get around. But it’s rocky on Mars. The Mars robotic rover would sometimes get hung up for days when a rock as big as itself blocked its way.

Getting a robot to walk as well as a person has long been a robot scientist’s dream. While you walk, you constantly shift your weight as you swing your arms. You make adjustments to your balance, posture, the length of your stride, and the force of your step. It’s not easy to design a robot with the brainpower, sensors, and flexible joints to do all that. But friendly, four-foot-tall ASIMO comes close.

To help it stay balanced, ASIMO has a speed sensor and soft projections on its feet that act like toes. ASIMO can stand on one foot, turn corners without shuffling, walk smoothly up and down stairs, and even dance a little.

Why walk or roll? Lots of animals hop, and this frogbot does, too. It doesn’t always land on its “feet” (neither do grasshoppers), but it knows how to right itself and get hopping again. Hopping robots might replace wheeled rovers in space exploration. The bouncy bots could easily hop over the rocky surface of planets and asteroids.

Staying on two legs is hard. Even people sometimes fall over. But animals with lots of legs don’t. So, scientists study insects (especially cockroaches, which for their size are the fastest land animal on earth) and spiders and even lobsters to imitate how they walk. This RoboLobster is designed to crawl underwater on the sandy bottom near the seashore.

Who needs legs? PaPeRo is a friendly little guy on wheels. When PaPeRo recognizes you, its eyes literally light up-they turn orange-and it turns its head to look at you when you talk. PaPeRo is designed to be a household companion. It can turn the lights on and off and change the TV channel on command. If it’s time to do your homework, your mom can email PaPeRo, and it will come to remind you. Although it won’t do your homework for you, PaPeRo will perform a little song and dance to cheer you up.

Meet Troody. She’s modeled after Troodon formosus, a carnivorous dinosaur of the Cretaceous period. It took five years for Troody’s inventor to get her to stand up from a sitting position without falling over, and then walk a few steps. If she were a real dino and that’s the best she could do, well, she’d be extinct.

This spider-bot has six legs and can fit in the palm of your hand. Scientists at NASA think that it might be better to send hundreds of little spider-bots, rather than one big rover, to crawl over the surface of planets scientists want to explore.

This bot is designed to slither like a snake, but it’s really rolling on wheels under its body sections.

This guard robot, Banryu, also has wheels on its legs. It roams your house, rolling smoothly when it can, then walking when the going gets tough. If it smells fire or senses a burglar, it calls you on its built-in cell phone.

Wheels and legs? This mechanical guy really “rolks.” On even ground, it rolls forward on its motorized wheels. But when the ground is loose or uneven, the robot rolls one wheel forward at a time-a combination of walking and rolling that its inventors call rolking.

Software supplier Dassault Systèmes (Paris) announced that its subsidiary Delmia Corp.’s (Auburn Hills, MI) IGRlP robotic solution and UltraPaint systems have been implemented at the Caterpillar manufacturing facility in Decatur, IL, to upgrade the off-road equipment manufacturer’s robotic paint lines.

With the IGRIP and UltraPaint systems, Caterpillar upgraded its robotic lines with new robots requiring extensive reprogramming. IGRIP is a physics-based, scalable robotic simulation solution for quick and graphical modeling and off-line programming (OLP) of complex, multidevice robotic workcells for applications such as painting, welding, dispensing, material removal, and machine tending. Its OLP capability allows users to accurately program robotic systems without tying up physical resources on the factory floor, reducing man-hours and process engineering lead-time while improving accuracy.

The UltraPaint solution includes a complete set of painting simulation tools. Spray gun and paint attributes can be entered into the painting device and the results can be graphically displayed in multiple colors illustrating relative film thickness; exact thickness can be obtained though the uses of a built-in film build gauge. Complex paint booths can be constructed, and multiple robot moving line applications can be simulated.

“The basic platform we’re going to ship will be a chassis with a motor, Evolution Robotics’ software for robot applications, and a VIA motherboard,” says Tom Burick, president of White Box Robotics. “Then people can add CD-ROM drives and Webcams for specialized robot applications.”

Among the robots that the company has produced is one designed for home security. The software includes facial recognition features so the security robot can wirelessly
e-mail a homeowner if an unrecognized person walks through the front door.

White Box Robotics plans to ship its first robots this summer, for “about the price of a PC,” Burick says.

Robot toys have come a long way since the “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots” of the 1960s. The newest entry is “Robosapien,” a 14-inch-high robot that’s being billed as a “robotic companion.”

The new toy designed by physicist Mark Tilden has 67 pre-programmed functions that include whistling, high-fives, dancing and throwing things. Robosapien is powered by a remote and can be programmed to perform a sequence of actions. The unit is priced from $79 and $99 and is powered by four “D” and three “AA” batteries that keep it going for up to six hours.

Another new entry in the growing robot genre is Wild Planet’s Spy Robot. The remote-controlled unit can retrieve items using a giant front claw and record what’s going on in other rooms with a built in tape player and report back to its owner. The Spy Robot retails for $29.95.

The Robotic Industries Association defines robot as follows: "A robot is a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools or specialized devices through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks." Recently, however, the industry's current working definition of a robot has come to be understood as any piece of equipment that has three or more degrees of movement or freedom.

Robotics is an increasingly visible and important component of modern business, especially in certain industries. Robotics-oriented production processes are most obvious in factories and manufacturing facilities; in fact, approximately 90 percent of all robots in operation today can be found in such facilities. These robots, termed "industrial robots," were found almost exclusively in automobile manufacturing plants as little as 15 to 20 years ago. But industrial robots are now being used in laboratories, research and development facilities, warehouses, hospitals, energy-oriented industries (petroleum, nuclear power, etc.), and other areas.