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Portal:Robotics
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Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology  Robotics is the science and technology of robots, including their design, manufacture, and application. Robotics requires a working knowledge of electronics, mechanics, and software. A person working in the field is a roboticist. The word robot was introduced by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1920), while the word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Runaround" (1941). A robot is an electro-mechanical or bio-mechanical device that can perform autonomous or preprogrammed tasks. Robots may be used to perform tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans, such as radioactive waste clean-up, or may be used to automate mindless repetitive tasks that should be performed with more precision by a robot than by a human, such as automobile production.  The word robot is used to refer to a wide range of machines, the common feature of which is that they are all capable of movement and can be used to perform physical tasks. Robots take on many different forms, ranging from humanoid, which mimic the human form and way of moving, to industrial, whose appearance is dictated by the function they are to perform. Robots can be grouped generally as mobile robots (eg. autonomous vehicles), manipulator robots (eg. industrial robots) and self reconfigurable robots, which can conform themselves to the task at hand. Robots may be controlled directly by a human, such as remotely-controlled bomb-disposal robots and robotic arms; or may act according to their own decision making ability, provided by artificial intelligence. However, the majority of robots fall in between these extremes, being controlled by pre-programmed computers.  New Horizons is a robotic spacecraft mission conducted by NASA. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons. NASA may also approve flybys of one or more other Kuiper Belt Objects. The craft was built primarily by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). New Horizons was successfully launched on January 19, 2006. After a flyby of Jupiter on February 28th, 2007 at 5:43:40 UTC, New Horizons is expected to arrive at Pluto in July 2015 before leaving the Solar System. The New Horizons spacecraft was launched directly into an Earth- and solar-escape trajectory. It had an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.21 km/s (36,260.7373 mph) just after its last engine shut down, making it the fastest spacecraft launch ever. New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers mission category, larger and more expensive than Discovery missions but smaller than "flagship" programs.  Credit: User:BradBeattie Team Osaka's humanoid robot practicing for Robocup. Concepts: AI - Automation - Behavior - Calibration - Control - Cybernetics - Human interaction - Kits -Locomotion - Mapping - Mechatronics - Microbotics - Nanorobotics - Neural network - Odometry - Pathfinding - Servomechanism - Software - Vision  A robotic spacecraft is a spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft that leaves Earth's orbit is often called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and lower risk factors. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, so telerobotic probes are the only way to explore them. Many artificial satellites are robotic spacecraft. Robotic spacecraft use telemetry to radio back to Earth acquired data and vehicle status information. Command systems were developed to allow remote control from the ground. Increased autonomy is important for distant probes where the light travel time prevents rapid decision and control from Earth. Newer probes such as Cassini-Huygens and the Mars Exploration Rovers are highly autonomous and use on-board computers to operate independently for extended periods of time. April 20, 2008 CORD Egypt started its registration to the second Robotics competition April 14, 2007 A coalition of high school teams from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Nevada took the top prize at the FIRST Robotics competition, otherwise known as the "Superbowl of Smarts."More... The United States Postal Service is wrapping mailboxes in some 200 cities nationwide in a special covering to look like "Star Wars" robot, R2-D2.More...  NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered more evidence on the Planet Mars(pictured) that water may have flowed beneath the surface and that "cracks" that lead below the surface may have, at one time, been "habitable" for "microbial life." More... A tiny pneumatic hand, with the ability to grasp objects smaller than a millimeter across has been developed by Yen-Wen Lu and Chang-Jin Kim of UCLA's Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. More... |
