The Past, Present, and Future
of Robotics
CMSC 479/679
May 3rd, 2010
1400 BC
Babylonians develop the
clepsydra, a clock that
measures time using the
flow of water. It's
considered one of the first
"robotic" devices in
history. For centuries,
inventors will refine the
design.
322 BC
The Greek philosopher
Aristotle imagines the great
utility of robots, writing, "If
every tool, when ordered,
or even of its own accord,
could do the work that
befits it then there would be
no need either of
apprentices for the master
workers or of slaves for the
lords."
1495
Leonardo da Vinci designs a
clockwork knight that will sit up,
wave its arms and move its
head and jaw. It's not certain
whether the robot was ever
built, but the design may
constitute the first humanoid
robot.
1737
French inventor Jacques de
Vaucanson builds a clockwork
duck capable of flapping its wings,
quacking, eating and digesting
food.
Vaucanson’s Digesting Duck followed the
principles of Descarte’s mechanistic
universe, and bolstered the Enlightenmentera belief that animals were just meat
machines, but automatons nonetheless. The
ability to create life no longer was the domain
of God and of living organisms, but was now
captive in the hands of man’s genius. These
ideas terrified and excited many people, but
were one of the major ideological changes
from a natural to a mechanistic world view.
1769
Hungarian author and inventor
Wolfgang von Kempelen builds "The
Turk," a maplewood box with a
mannequin, dressed in cloak and
turban, protruding from the back. The
device gains great fame as an
automaton capable of playing chess
against skilled opponents--until it is
discovered that a human operator
hides inside the box.
1801
French silk weaver
and inventor Joseph
Marie Jacquard
invents an automated
loom that is controlled
by punch cards. Within
a decade it is being
mass-produced, and
thousands are in use
across Europe.
1921
Czech playwright Karl
Capek popularizes the
term "robot" in a play
called "R.U.R. (Rossums
Universal Robot)." The
word comes from the
Czech robota, which
means drudgery or forced
work. The play ends with
robots taking over the
earth and destroying their
makers.
1926
Film director Fritz Lang
releases Metropolis, a
silent film set in a
futuristic urban dystopia.
It features a female robot-the first to appear on the
silver screen-who takes
the shape of a human
woman in order to
destroy a labor
movement.
1942
American science fiction author Isaac Asimov publishes a
short story, "Runaround," that introduces the "Three Laws
of Robotics"--rules that every robot is programmed to obey:
1.A robot may not harm a human being, or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human
beings except where such orders would conflict with the
First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
1954
Industrial robotics
pioneer George Devol
files a patent for the
first programmable
robot and coins the
term "universal
automaton."
1961
Unimate, the world's
first industrial robot,
goes to work on a
General Motors
assembly line.
1966
The Artificial Intelligence
Center at the Stanford
Research Center begins
development of Shakey,
the first mobile robot. It is
endowed with a limited
ability to see and model
its environment and is
controlled by a computer
that fills an entire room.
1998
A fuzzy, batlike robot
called Furby becomes
the must-have toy of the
holiday season. The $30
toys "evolve" over time,
first speaking in
gibberish but soon
developing the use of
preprogrammed English
phrases. More than 27
million of the toys sell in
a 12-month period.
2007
Taz faces off against
Thunderpudgy.
Note use of illegal
nuclear backpack
for power by
Thunderpudgy
team.
Robot Assisted Surgery
Swallowing a Robot
Military Robots
Military Robots
Swarm Robotics
Swarm robotics is a new approach to the
coordination of multirobot systems which consist of
large numbers of relatively simple physical robots.
The goal of this approach is to study the design of
robots (both their physical body and their controlling
behaviors) such that a desired collective behavior
emerges from the inter-robot interactions and the
interactions of the robots with the environment,
inspired but not limited by the emergent behavior
observed in social insects, called swarm intelligence.
A-Tron
Claytronics
Polymorphic Robots
• Why?
• Issues?
Basic Unit
2-Unit Creep
Rolling
Walking
Sidewinder
On the beach!
Climbing Stairs (new unit)
Climbing the wall (sort of)
Climbing a fence
Nano-robotics
• What?
• Why?
• Issues?
– Grey goo
Nanorobotics is the
technology of creating
machines or robots at
or close to the scale of
a nanometre (10-9
metres).
The Gecko
Dry Adhesion
Nature can be an inspiration for innovations in science. One such inspiration is
comes from the gecko lizard which can climb on walls and ceilings of almost
any suface texture. Rather than using it's claws or sticky substances, the
gecko is able to stick to the walls through dry adhesion which requires no
energy to hold it to the surface and leaves no residue. The dry adhesion force
comes from surface contact forces such as Vanderwaals forces which act
between all materials in contact. The gecko's trick to sticking to surfaces lies
in its feet, specifically the very fine hairs on its toes. There are billions of these
tiny hairs which make contact with the surface and create a huge collective
surface area of contact. The hairs have physical propeties which let them bend
and conform to a wide variety of surface roughnesses, meaning that the
gecko's secret lies in the structure of these hairs themselves. By studying this
structure, we are able to mimic the biological structures with synthetic
materials.
Waalbot
Speaking of Lizards
Water Runner
Water Runner
Nanomedicine
Beyond Batteries
Slugbot
In this case the robot 'hunted' slugs. The collected
slugs would be fermented to produce biogas in a
separate off-board digester unit. The gas would then
be passed through methane fuel cell to generate
electricity. The electricity would be stored in batteries
and could be downloaded to a 'hungry' robot.
Apart from their relative ease of capture (compared to
zebras), slugs were chosen because they are a major
pest, are reasonably plentiful, have no hard shell or
skeleton, and are reasonably large. It is also more
technologically interesting to catch mobile prey rather
than just grazing on plants.
Slugbot
EcoBot II
With a top speed of
10 centimetres per
hour, EcoBot II's
roving prowess is still
modest to say the
least. "Every 12
minutes it gets
enough energy to
take a step forwards
two centimetres and
send a transmission
back," says Melhuish.
Autonomy
• Intelligent robots
• Is it possible?
• Would it be a good thing (think HAL and
the Terminator movies)?
• What are the implications socially and
ethically?
Conciousness
Dualism
Materialism
The Hard Problem
The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David
Chalmers[1], refers to the "hard problem" of explaining why we
have qualitative phenomenal experiences. It is contrasted with
the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate,
integrate information, report mental states, focus attention,
etc.Various formulations of the "hard problem":
•"Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life
at all?”
•"How is it that some organisms are subjects of experience?"･
•"Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?"･
•"Why do qualia exist?”
•"Why is there a subjective component to experience?”
•"Why aren't we philosophical zombies?"