Origins
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Since the beginnings of civilisation man has had a fascination for a human-like creation that would assist him. Societies in the early part of the first millennium engaged in slavery and used those slaves to perform the tasks which were either dirty or menial labours. Having slaves freed the enslavers to carry on their society and concentrate on what they perceived as more important tasks such as business and politics. Man had discovered mechanics and the means of creating complex mechanisms which would perform repetitive functions such as waterwheels and pumps. Technological advances were slow but there were more complex machines, generally limited to a very small number, which performed more grandiose functions such as those invented by Hero of Alexandria.
In the first half of the second millennium man began to develop more complex machines as well as rediscovering the Greek engineering methods. Men such as Leonardo Da Vinci in 1495 through to Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739 have made plans for, and built, automata and robots leading to books of designs such as the Japanese Karakuri zui (Illustrated Machinery) in 1796. As mechanical techniques developed through the Industrial age we find more practical applications such as NikolaTesla in 1898 who designed a radio-controlled torpedo and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation creation Televox in 1926. From here we find a more android development as designers tried to mimic more human-like features including designs such as those of biologist Makoto Nishimura in 1929 and his creation Gakutensoku, which cried and changed its facial expressions, and the more crude Elektro from Westinghouse in 1938.
Electronics now became the driving force of development instead of mechanics with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robotscreated by William Grey Walter in Bristol , England Trenton , New Jersey
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Since then we have seen robots finally reach a more true assimilation of all technologies to produce robots such as ASIMO which can walk and move like a human. Robots have replaced slaves in the assistance of performing those repetitive and dangerous tasks which humans prefer not to do or unable to do due to size limitations or even those such as in outer space or at the bottom of the sea where humans could not survive the extreme environments.
Robots come in those two basic forms: Those which are used to make or move things, such as Industrial robots or mobile or servicing robotsand those which are used for research into human-like robots such as ASIMO and TOPIO as well as those into more defined and specific roles such as Nano robots and Swarm robots.
Man has developed a fear of the autonomous robot and how it may react in society, such as Shelley's Frankenstein and the EATR, and yet we still use robots in a wide variety of tasks such as vacuuming floors, mowing lawns, cleaning drains, investigating other planets, building cars, entertainment and in warfare.
Etymology
The word robot was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920. The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people called robots, but they are closer to the modern ideas of androids, creatures who can be mistaken for humans. They can plainly think for themselves, though they seem happy to serve. At issue is whether the robots are being exploited and the consequences of their treatment.
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, the painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual originator.
In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři ("workers", from Latin labor). However, he did not like the word, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti". The word robota means literally "work", "labor" or "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic languages. Traditionally the robota was the work period a serf (corvée) had to give for his lord, typically 6 months of the year. Including Slovak, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish. The origin of the word is the Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude" ("work" in contemporary Bulgarian and Russian), which in turn comes from the Indo-European root Serfdom was outlawed in 1848 in Bohemia, so at the time Čapek wrote R.U.R., usage of the term robota had broadened to include various types of work, but the obsolete sense of "serfdom" would still have been known.
The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, was coined by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov also created the "Three Laws of Robotics" which are a recurring theme in his books. These have since been used by many others to define laws used in fact and fiction. Introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround" the Laws state the following:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any 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.
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History
Many ancient mythologies include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants built by the Greek god Hephaestus (Vulcan to the Romans), the clay golems of Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend, and Galatea, the mythical statue of Pygmalion that came to life. In Greek drama, Deus Ex Machina was contrived as a dramatic device that usually involved lowering a deity by wires into the play to solve a seemingly impossible problem.
In the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical steam-operated bird he called "The Pigeon".Hero of Alexandria China
Al-Jazari (1136–1206), a Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty, designed and constructed a number of automated machines, including kitchen appliances, musical automata powered by water, and programmable automata. The robots appeared as four musicians on a boat in a lake, entertaining guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bumped into little levers that operated percussion instruments. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations.
Modern developments
The Japanese craftsman Hisashige Tanaka (1799–1881), known as "Japan's Edison" or "Karakuri Giemon", created an array of extremely complex mechanical toys, some of which served tea, fired arrows drawn from a quiver, and even painted a Japanese kanji character. In 1898 Nikola Tesla publicly demonstrated a radio-controlled torpedo. Based on patents for "teleautomation", Tesla hoped to develop it into a weapon system for the US Navy.
In 1926, Westinghouse Electric Corporation created Televox, the first robot put to useful work. They followed Televox with a number of other simple robots, including one called Rastus, made in the crude image of a black man. In the 1930s, they created a humanoid robot known as Elektro for exhibition purposes, including the 1939 and 1940 World's Fairs. In 1928, Japan
The first electronic autonomous robots were created by William Grey Walter of the Burden Neurological Institute at Bristol , England
The first truly modern robot, digitally operated and programmable, was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was ultimately called theUnimate. Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton , New Jersey
Commercial and industrial robots are now in widespread use performing jobs more cheaply or with greater accuracy and reliability than humans. They are also employed for jobs which are too dirty, dangerous or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, assembly and packing, transport, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, and mass production of consumer and industrial goods.
Timeline
Date | Significance | Robot name | Inventor |
1st century AD and earlier | Descriptions of over a hundred machines and automata, including a fire engine, wind organ, coin-operated machine, and steam-powered aeliopile, in Pneumatica and Automata by Heron | Ctesibius, Philo,Heron, and others | |
1206 | Early programmable automata | Robotband | Al-Jazari |
c. 1495 | Designs for a humanoid robot | Mechanical knight | Leonardo da Vinci |
1738 | Mechanical duck that was able to eat, flap its wings, and excrete | Digesting Duck | Jacques de Vaucanson |
1800s | Japanese mechanical toys that served tea, fired arrows, and painted | Karakuritoys | Hisashige Tanaka |
1921 | First fictional automata called "robots" appear in the play R.U.R. | Rossum's Universal Robots | Karel Čapek |
1928 | Humanoid robot, based on a suit of armor with electrical actuators, exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Model Engineers Society in | Eric | W. H. Richards |
1930s | Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 World's Fairs | Elektro | Westinghouse Electric Corporation |
1948 | Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors | Elsie and Elmer | William Grey Walter |
1956 | First commercial robot, from the Unimation company founded by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, based on Devol's patents | Unimate | George Devol |
1961 | First installed industrial robot | Unimate | George Devol |
1963 | First palletizing robot | Palletizer | |
1973 | First robot with six electromechanically driven axes | Famulus | KUKA Robot Group |
1975 | Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product | PUMA | Victor Scheinman |
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