Insight into Robotics and Robots:
The science of designing, building und using robots is called robotics. And what is a robot?
Many people think of robots as mechanical people that can see, hear, feel, walk and talk. This kind of a robot is yet a distant dream. The robots in use today are basically computerised machines. They can be programmed to do a variety of tasks. Let's take a look at a few example that will help us understand what robots are. A robot can be made to do a large number of jobs. For example, a robot can drill holes of several different sizes. Robots are also made to sort vegetables, shear sheep, pluck chickens, form rice cakes and assemble mechanical parts. Robotic trains carry commuters to and from work. Robots can even assemble delicate watches and computer components. In factories, robots do spot welding and spray painting.
A robot can also be programmed to change from one job to another and can be 'taught' to handle new tasks. For example, the same robot could drill a hole as well as place bolts into the holes drilled by it. A robot can do one thing for a while, then another and then yet another. For instance, it can select English character keys and put them into a few typewriters, then put Hindi keys into another few and then Arabic keys into a third batch. An industrial robot called 'T' can select its own tools from a rack, drill holes accurate to 0.005 inch and measure the perimeter of 250 different parts. It helps build F-16 fighter planes. From these examples, it should be clear that u robot is a compulerised, multifunc~tional and reprogl-ummable machine lhar peflorms a large variety of lash.