Utilization (partial listing)
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Robots are being used in a variety of applications. This section provides a summary of some of the areas.
The use of robots by the military has increased enormously in the past few years. The following comments are taken from a Carnegie Mellon web site. It describes some of their work for DOD in developing a robot for mine clearing operations.
Presently, land mines planted in rugged terrain require humanitarian de-mining efforts. This arduous and dangerous process of manually detecting a landmine with the equivalent of a metal-detector, places human lives in great risk and is time consuming. For effective and reliable mine detection, mine-clearing robotics must position their sensors appropriately over “hills” and “holes” created concave and convex terrain surfaces.
Additionally, we must integrate these sensors to a rover that releases minimal pressure to the ground so as not to trigger a mine. Having a reasonably priced mine-detecting rover that can properly function over rugged terrain will reduce the need to utilize humanitarian efforts and will significantly decrease the amount of time required to clear an area of mines. Such a machine will remove its controller from a hazardous zone and will aid significantly in reducing the 85 to 100 million land mines that are already buried across the globe.
Space
Probably the most famous robot in recent years (excluding those in the movies) is Sojourner, the one that landed on and explored Mars in 1997 after a 9 month trip from Earth. Some of its characteristics are summarized below.
Power
The lander (base station) has three solar panels that supply up to 1,200 watt-hours of power per day. At night, the lander will operate on rechargeable silver zinc batteries with a capacity of more than 40 amp-hours. Sojourner is powered by a 1.9-square-foot solar array, sufficient to power the rover for several hours a day.
Communications
Pathfinder has a high-gain antenna for high-speed (2,250 bps) communications with NASA's Deep Space Network. It also has a low-gain antenna that sends information at lower rates (40 bps), but does not need to be actively pointed at Earth. Sojourner communicates only with the lander, via UHF link.
Temperature control
Much of Sojourner's electronic components are located in the Warm Electronics Box, the thermally protected body of the rover. Insulation is provided by a nearly weightless material called silica aerogel. Three heating units, each about the size of a C battery, contain small amounts of plutonium-238 that give off about 1 watt of heat each to keep the rover's electronics warm.
Mobility
The rover's six-wheel chassis and suspension uses a rocker-bogie system, with joints that rotate and conform to the ground. Sojourner can lean as much as 45 degrees on a side without tipping over and is capable of climbing over boulders 8 inches high. Operators on Earth choose targets for the rover to visit, and the rover autonomously decides how it will reach the target
Cameras
A stereoscopic camera system is used in conjunction with lasers at the front of the rover to detect and avoid obstacles. The rover also carries a color-imaging camera at the rear, next to the APXSt and perform its tasks.
Geology
The Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer analyzes the elements that make up Martian rocks and soil by bombarding samples with charged particles and measuring how they interact with the sample. The APXS must be in contact with the sample, so the sensor head is mounted
Brains
The "brain" is comprised of two electronics boards interconnected to one another, the sensors within the WEB (Warm Electronics Box), and sensors and actuators external to the WEB via a set of three Flex cables. Although the boards are generally referred to as the "CPU" Board and the "Power" Board, they each contain components which are responsible for power generation, power conditioning, power distribution and control, analog and digital I/O control and processing, computing (i.e., the CPU), and data storage (i.e., memory).
Although the boards are generally referred to as the "CPU" Board and the "Power" Board, they each contain components which are responsible for power generation, power conditioning, power distribution and control, analog and digital I/O control and processing, computing (i.e., the CPU), and data storage (i.e., memory). The board set is pictured below along with listing of several physical parameters.
Robotics is one of the fastest growing engineering fields of today. Millions of dollars have been spent in the developments of robots to be used in all sorts of field. The use of robots is more common today than ever before and it is no longer exclusively used by the heavy production industries. Robots are designed to remove the human factor from labor intensive or dangerous work. The computer is the brain of the robot that receives data from various sources to control the movement of the robot in order to accomplish a task.
The idea of applying robotics technology in agriculture is very new. The main area of application of robots in agriculture is at the harvesting stage. Fruit picking robot and sheep shearing robot are designed to replace human labor. The agricultural industry is behind other industries in using robots because the sort of jobs involved in agriculture are not straight forward and many repetitive tasks are not exactly the same every time. In most cases, many factors have to be considered(i.e.: size and color of the fruit to be picked) before the commencement of a task. This drawing is of a robot designed by the University of Western Australia to shear sheep.
A lot of research is being directed towards underwater exploration. Northeastern University is one of the many organizations working in this area. The following comments were summarized from their web page.
This program is undertaking the implementation and in-water testing of two classes of biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicles. The first is an 8-legged ambulatory vehicle that is based on the lobster and is intended for autonomous remote-sensing operations in rivers and/or the littoral zone ocean bottom with robust adaptations to irregular bottom contours, current and surge. The second vehicle is an undulatory system that is based on the lamprey and is intended for remote sensing operations in the water column with robust depth/altitude control and high maneuverability.
These vehicles are based on a common biomimetic control, actuator, and sensor architecture that features highly modularized components and low cost per vehicle. Operating in concert, they can conduct autonomous investigation of both the bottom and water column of the littoral zone or rivers. These systems represent a new class of autonomous underwater vehicles that may be adapted to operations in a variety of habitats.