РефератыИностранный языкRoRobotics Essay Research Paper Robots the definition

Robotics Essay Research Paper Robots the definition

Robotics Essay, Research Paper


Robots, the definition from Webster s Dictionary, is an


automatic device that performs functions normally ascribed to


humans or a machine form of a human. Robots and robotics are


growing fields that have progressed since the 1940 s. The first


use of the word ‘robot’ was made by the acclaimed Czech


playwright Karel Capek, from the Czech word for forced labor or


serf. The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play


Rossum’s Universal Robots which opened in January of 1921. In


Rossum’s Universal Robots, Capek poses a paradise where the


machines initially bring so many benefits but in the end bring an


equal amount of blight, in the form of unemployment and social


unrest. The word ‘robotics’ was first used in Runaround, a short


story published in 1942 by Isaac Asimov. One of the first robots


Asimov wrote about was a robotherapist, a modern counterpart to


Asimov’s fictional character is Eliza. Eliza was born in 1966 by a


Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor, Joseph


Weizenbaum, who wrote Eliza, a computer program for the study


of natural language communication between man and machine. She


was initially programmed with 240 lines of code to simulate a


psychotherapist by answering questions with questions.


Isaac Asimov had four laws that he thought all robots should go


by: Law Zeroth: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through


inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.


Law One: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through


inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would


violate a higher order law.


Law Two: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings,


except where such orders would conflict with a higher order law.


Law Three: A robot must protect its own existence as long as


such protection does not conflict with a higher order law.


Some of the first actually Robots date into the 1940 s. This


robot was done by Grey Walter and called Machina Spectulatrix.


People called it the turtlebot for short. His robot was just


recently restored to a working state. The turtlebot s are


three-wheeling, light-seeking creatures. A photoelectric cell was


mounted on the steering column with a front wheel attached. The


turtles were propelled by two small electric motors, to roam in


any direction with sensor contacts to avoid obstacles. The turtles


searched and aimed towards the light, but when the light


intensity became too bright they retreated to their hutches to


recharge. Its a very basic robot but Walter was ahead of his time


doing the Robot.


In 1956, a meeting occurred between George C. Devol and


Joseph F. Engelberger. The two met over cocktails to discuss the


writings of Isaac Asimov. The result of this historic meeting was


that Devol and Engelberger, created a working robot nicknamed


the ‘Unimate’. The first Unimate was installed at a General


Motors plant, where it worked with the heated die-casting


machines. Engelberger started a manufacturing company called


‘Unimation’ which stood for Universal Automation, the first


commercial company to produce robots. Devol wrote the


necessary patents. Unimation is still in production today, with


robots for sale.


All robots that work and do things are run by programs.


Most of the programs being made are trying to emulate programs


that let the robot have AI. AI stands for artificial intelligence.


Back in 1637 a French philosopher-mathematician Rene Descartes


predicted that it would never be impossible to make a thing that


had AI. In 1950 the British mathematician and computer pioneer


Alan Turing declared that one day there would be a machine that


could duplicate the thoughts of a human being. This would be done


by passing a specialized test, this test will be done by a computer


and a human hidden from view would be asked random identical


questions. If the computer were successful, the questioner would


be unable to distinguish the machine

from the person by the


answers.


Inspired by Turing s Theory, the first conference on AI


convened at Dartmouth College in N.H. in 1956. Soon afterwards,


an AI laboratory was started at Massachusetts Institute of


Technology by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, two of the


nation s leading AI researchers. McCarthy also invented the AI


computer Language, Lisp; but by the early 1990 s AI itself had


not been achieved. However, logic programs called expert


systems allow computers to make decisions by interpreting data


and selecting from among alternatives. Technicians can run


programs used in complex medical diagnostics, language


translation, mineral exploration and even computer design.


Machinery can outperform humans physically, as well as


mentally. The fastest computer is able to calculate roughly 10


billion calculations per second. In order to achieve the same track


as the mind, computers have been made with several processors


to follow calculations at the same time.


Critics say that this does not involve understanding,


something that a human would have. This would be theoretically


impossible and involve learning the material. Some experts have


suggested that computers should be modeled after the human


brain, which essentially consists of a network of nerve cells.


The research of AI has progressed so much that some


computers can preform complicated- though extremely


specialized- tasks. For example, artificial intelligence systems


have been produced that can diagnose diseases and locate


minerals in the Earth. Such systems are often called Expert


systems. They require vasts amount of knowlegde or information


in the computer to provide for the basis of the computers


thinking ability. To diagnose a disease a computer needs to be


programed with knowledge of thousands symptoms and how these


symtoms relate to hundreds of diseases.


Programs have also been developed that enable computers


to comprehend commands in a natural language–e.g., ordinary


English. The software systems of this type that have been


produced so far are limited in their vocabulary and knowledge to


specific, narrowly defined subject areas. They contain large


amounts of information about the meaning of words pertaining to


that subject, as well as information about grammatical rules and


common violations of those rules.


Major and continuing advances in computer processing


speeds and memory sizes have facilitated the development of AI


programs. Although most AI programs attempting to simulate


higher mental functions incorporate the bottleneck of limited


short-term memory, which restricts humans to carrying out one


or a few mental tasks at a time, many investigators have begun to


explore how the intelligence of computer programs can be


enhanced by incorporating parallel processing–e.x., the


simultaneous execution of several separate operations by means


of computer memories that allow many processes to be carried


out at once. The question of which portions of the human brain


operate serially and which operate in parallel has been a topic of


intense debate by researchers in both the cognitive sciences and


AI, but no clear verdict had been reached by the mid-1990s.


The largest computer memories now contain elementary


circuits that are comparable in number to the synaptic


connections (about 10 trillion) in the human brain, and they


operate at speeds (billions of operations per second) that are far


faster than elementary neural speeds.The challenge driving AI


research is to understand how computers’ capabilities must be


organized in order to reproduce the many kinds of mental activity


that are comprised by the term “thinking.” AI research has thus


focused on understanding the mechanisms involved in human


mental tasks and on designing software that performs similarly,


starting with relatively simple ones and continually progressing to


levels of greater complexity.

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