1.
Robot
–
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be guided by a control device or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to take on human form but most robots are designed to perform a task with no regard to how they look. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a sense of intelligence or thought of its own. These technologies deal with automated machines that can take the place of humans in dangerous environments or manufacturing processes, or resemble humans in appearance, many of todays robots are inspired by nature contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics. These robots have also created a branch of robotics, soft robotics. From the time of ancient civilization there have many accounts of user-configurable automated devices and even automata resembling animals and humans. As mechanical techniques developed through the Industrial age, there appeared more practical applications such as automated machines, remote-control and wireless remote-control. The word robot was first used to denote a fictional humanoid in a 1920 play R. U. R. by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek but it was Karels brother Josef Čapek who was the words true inventor. Electronics evolved into the force of development with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robots created by William Grey Walter in Bristol. The first digital and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was named the Unimate, there are concerns about the increasing use of robots and their role in society. Robots are blamed for rising unemployment as they replace workers in increasing numbers of functions, the use of robots in military combat raises ethical concerns. The possibilities of robot autonomy and potential repercussions have been addressed in fiction, the word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots. Closely related to the concept of a robot is the field of Synthetic Biology, the idea of automata originates in the mythologies of many cultures around the world. Engineers and inventors from ancient civilizations, including Ancient China, Ancient Greece, since circa 400 BC, myths of Crete include Talos, a man of bronze who guarded the Cretan island of Europa from pirates. In ancient Greece, the Greek engineer Ctesibius applied a knowledge of pneumatics and hydraulics to produce the first organ, in the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical steam-operated bird he called The Pigeon. Hero of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician and inventor, created numerous user-configurable automated devices, the 11th century Lokapannatti tells of how the Buddhas relics were protected by mechanical robots, from the kingdom of Roma visaya, until they were disarmed by King Ashoka. Yan Shi proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork made of leather, wood, in 1066, the Chinese inventor Su Song built a water clock in the form of a tower which featured mechanical figurines which chimed the hours
Robot
–
ASIMO (2000) at the
Expo 2005, a
bipedal humanoid robot.
Robot
–
Articulated welding robots used in a factory, a type of
industrial robot.
Robot
–
The
quadrupedal military robot Cheetah, an evolution of
BigDog (pictured), was clocked as the world's fastest legged robot in 2012, beating the record set by an
MIT bipedal robot in 1989.
Robot
–
KITT (a fictitious robot) is mentally anthropomorphic
2.
Bipedalism
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Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism moves by means of its two rear limbs or legs. An animal or machine that moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped /ˈbaɪpɛd/. Types of bipedal movement include walking, running, or hopping, few modern species are habitual bipeds whose normal method of locomotion is two-legged. A larger number of modern species intermittently or briefly use a bipedal gait, several non-archosaurian lizard species move bipedally when running, usually to escape from threats. Many primate and bear species will adopt a bipedal gait in order to reach food or explore their environment, several arboreal primate species, such as gibbons and indriids, exclusively walk on two legs during the brief periods they spend on the ground. Many animals rear up on their hind legs whilst fighting or copulating, some animals commonly stand on their hind legs, in order to reach food, to keep watch, to threaten a competitor or predator, or to pose in courtship, but do not move bipedally. The word is derived from the Latin words bi two and ped- foot, as contrasted with quadruped four feet, limited and exclusive bipedalism can offer a species several advantages. While upright, non-locomotory limbs become free for other uses, including manipulation, flight, digging, even though bipedalism is slower at first, over long distances, it has allowed humans to outrun most other animals according to the endurance running hypothesis. Bipedality in kangaroo rats has been hypothesized to improve locomotor performance, zoologists often label behaviors, including bipedalism, as facultative or obligate. Even this distinction is not completely clear-cut — for example, humans other than infants normally walk and run in biped fashion, but almost all can crawl on hands and knees when necessary. Even if one ignores exceptions caused by some kind of injury or illness, there are many cases, including the fact that normal humans can crawl on hands. This article therefore avoids the terms facultative and obligate, and focuses on the range of styles of locomotion used by various groups of animals. There are a number of states of movement commonly associated with bipedalism, in most bipeds this is an active process, requiring constant adjustment of balance. One foot in front of another, with at least one foot on the ground at any time, one foot in front of another, with periods where both feet are off the ground. Moving by a series of jumps with both feet moving together, the great majority of living terrestrial vertebrates are quadrupeds, with bipedalism exhibited by only a handful of living groups. Humans, gibbons and large birds walk by raising one foot at a time, on the other hand, most macropods, smaller birds, lemurs and bipedal rodents move by hopping on both legs simultaneously. Tree kangaroos are able to walk or hop, most commonly alternating feet when moving arboreally, there are no known living or fossil bipedal amphibians. Many species of lizards become bipedal during high-speed, sprint locomotion, including the worlds fastest lizard, the first known biped is the bolosaurid Eudibamus whose fossils date from 290 million years ago
Bipedalism
–
An
ostrich, the fastest extant biped at 70 km/h
Bipedalism
–
A Man Running -
Eadweard Muybridge
Bipedalism
–
ASIMO - a bipedal robot
3.
Android (robot)
–
An android is a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human, especially one with a body having a flesh-like resemblance. Historically, androids remained completely within the domain of science fiction where they are seen in film. Only recently have advancements in technology allowed the design of functional. The word was coined from the Greek root ἀνδρ-, man, while the term android is used in reference to human-looking robots in general, a robot with a female appearance can also be referred to as a gynoid. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest use to Ephraim Chambers Cyclopaedia, the term android appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons. The term android was used in a modern sense by the French author Auguste Villiers de lIsle-Adam in his work Tomorrows Eve. This story features an artificial humanlike robot named Hadaly, as said by the officer in the story, In this age of Realien advancement, who knows what goes on in the mind of those responsible for these mechanical dolls. Although Karel Čapeks robots in R. U. R, —the play that introduced the word robot to the world—were organic artificial humans, the word robot has come to primarily refer to mechanical humans, animals, and other beings. The term android can mean one of these, while a cyborg would be a creature that is a combination of organic. The word android was used in Star Trek, The Original Series episode What Are Little Girls Made Of. The abbreviation andy, coined as a pejorative by writer Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. has seen some further usage, authors have used the term android in more diverse ways than robot or cyborg. In some fictional works, the difference between a robot and android is only their appearance, with androids being made to look like humans on the outside, in other stories, authors have used the word android to mean a wholly organic, yet artificial, creation. Other fictional depictions of androids fall somewhere in between, several projects aiming to create androids that look, and, to a certain degree, speak or act like a human being have been launched or are underway. In 2006, Kokoro Co. developed a new DER2 android, the height of the human body part of DER2 is 165 cm. DER2 can not only change its expression but also move its hands and feet, the air servosystem which Kokoro Co. developed originally is used for the actuator. As a result of having an actuator controlled precisely with air pressure via a servosystem, DER2 realized a slimmer body than that of the former version by using a smaller cylinder. Outwardly DER2 has a more beautiful proportion, compared to the previous model, DER2 has thinner arms and a wider repertoire of expressions. Once programmed, it is able to choreograph its motions and gestures with its voice, the Intelligent Mechatronics Lab, directed by Hiroshi Kobayashi at the Tokyo University of Science, has developed an android head called Saya, which was exhibited at Robodex 2002 in Yokohama, Japan
Android (robot)
–
DER 01, a Japanese
actroid
Android (robot)
–
EveR-2, the first android that has the ability to
sing
Android (robot)
–
Main articles
4.
TOPIO
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TOPIO is a bipedal humanoid robot designed to play table tennis against a human being. It has been developed since 2005 by TOSY, a firm in Vietnam. It was publicly demonstrated at the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition on November 28,2007, TOPIO3.0 stands approximately 1.88 m tall and weighs 120 kg
TOPIO
–
TOPIO 3.0 at
IREX 2009.
5.
Ping pong
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Table tennis, also known as ping pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball back and forth across a table using a small bat. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net, a point is scored when a player fails to return the ball within the rules. Play is fast and demands quick reactions, spinning the ball alters its trajectory and limits an opponents options, giving the hitter a great advantage. Table tennis is governed by the worldwide organization International Table Tennis Federation, ITTF currently includes 220 member associations. The table tennis rules are specified in the ITTF handbook. Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988, with several event categories, from 1988 until 2004, these were mens singles, womens singles, mens doubles and womens doubles. Since 2008, an event has been played instead of the doubles. The sport originated in Victorian England, where it was played among the upper-class as a parlour game. It has been suggested that makeshift versions of the game were developed by British military officers in India in around 1860s or 1870s, who brought it back with them. A row of books stood up along the center of the table as a net and it had several different names, including whiff-whaff. The name ping-pong was in use before British manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd trademarked it in 1901. The name ping-pong then came to describe the game played using the rather expensive Jaquess equipment, a similar situation arose in the United States, where Jaques sold the rights to the ping-pong name to Parker Brothers. Parker Brothers then enforced its trademark for the term in the 1920s making the various associations change their names to table tennis instead of the more common, but trademarked, term. The next major innovation was by James W. Gibb, a British enthusiast of table tennis, who discovered novelty celluloid balls on a trip to the US in 1901 and found them to be ideal for the game. This was followed by E. C. Goode who, in 1901, invented the modern version of the racket by fixing a sheet of pimpled, or stippled, rubber to the wooden blade. Table tennis was growing in popularity by 1901 to the extent that tournaments were being organized, books being written on the subject, in 1921, the Table Tennis Association was founded in Britain, and the International Table Tennis Federation followed in 1926. London hosted the first official World Championships in 1926, in 1933, the United States Table Tennis Association, now called USA Table Tennis, was formed. In the 1930s, Edgar Snow commented in Red Star Over China that the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War had a passion for the English game of table tennis which he found bizarre
Ping pong
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Table tennis at the highest level
Ping pong
–
Parker Brothers Ping-Pong game
Ping pong
–
Assortment of 40 mm table tennis balls
Ping pong
–
Forehand
6.
Nao (robot)
–
Nao is an autonomous, programmable humanoid robot developed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French robotics company headquartered in Paris. The robots development began with the launch of Project Nao in 2004, on 15 August 2007, Nao replaced Sonys robot dog Aibo as the robot used in the RoboCup Standard Platform League, an international robot soccer competition. The Nao was used in RoboCup 2008 and 2009, and the NaoV3R was chosen as the platform for the SPL at RoboCup 2010, several versions of the robot have been released since 2008. The Nao Academics Edition was developed for universities and laboratories for research and it was released to institutions in 2008, and was made publicly available by 2011. Various upgrades to the Nao platform have since released, including the 2011 Nao Next Gen. Nao robots have used for research and education purposes in numerous academic institutions worldwide. As of 2015, over 5,000 Nao units are in use in more than 50 countries, Aldebaran Robotics was established in 2005 by Bruno Maisonnier, who had previously begun developing the robot under Project Nao in 2004. Six prototypes of Nao were designed between 2005 and 2007, in March 2008, the first production version of the robot, the Nao RoboCup Edition, was released to the contestants of that years RoboCup. The Nao Academics Edition was released to universities, educational institutions, in the summer of 2010, Nao made global headlines with a synchronized dance routine at the Shanghai Expo in China. In October 2010, the University of Tokyo purchased 30 Nao robots for their Nakamura Lab, in December 2010, a Nao robot was demonstrated doing a stand-up comedy routine, and a new version of the robot was released, featuring sculpted arms and improved motors. In May 2011, Aldebaran announced that it would release Naos controlling source code to the public as open source software, in June 2011, Aldebaran raised US$13 million in a round of venture funding led by Intel Capital. In 2013, Aldebaran was acquired by Japans SoftBank Mobile for US$100 million, in 2012, donated Nao robots were used to teach autistic children in a UK school, some of the children found the childlike, expressive robots more relatable than human beings. In a broader context, Nao robots have used by numerous British schools to introduce children to robots. By the end of 2014, over 5,000 Nao robots were in use with educational, in 2015, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group began trialling Nao robots for customer service use in its Japanese bank branches. In July 2015, Nao robots were shown to demonstrate a basic form of self-awareness in an experiment at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Nao is available as a robot for schools, colleges and universities to teach programming. The various versions of the Nao robotics platform feature either 14,21 or 25 degrees of freedom, a specialised model with 21 DoF and no actuated hands was created for the Robocup competition. All Nao Academics versions feature an inertial measurement unit with accelerometer, gyrometer and four ultrasonic sensors that provide Nao with stability, the legged versions included eight force-sensing resistors and two bumpers
Nao (robot)
7.
RoboCup
–
RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition proposed and founded in 1997. The aim is to promote robotics and AI research, by offering a publicly appealing, the name RoboCup is a contraction of the competitions full name, Robot Soccer World Cup, but there are many other stages of the competition such as RoboCupRescue, RoboCup@Home and RoboCupJunior. In 2016, the competition was held in Leipzig, Germany. RoboCup 2017 will be held in Nagoya, Japan, RoboCup Logistics League is part of the RoboCup Major Leagues since 2012 and focuses on flexible solutions for industrial production using self-organizing robots. RoboCupJunior Soccer Challenge Dance Challenge Rescue Challenge Dance Theatre Challenge Each team is fully autonomous in all RoboCup leagues, once the game starts, the only input from any human is from the referee. The formal RoboCup was preceded by the first International Micro Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament held by KAIST in Taejon, Korea and this was won by an American team from Newton Labs, and the competition was shown on CNN. - University of Technology Sydney UTS-USTC WrightEagle Unleashed. A. N. D. O. R. A. O
RoboCup
–
Team rUNSWift competing in the Standard Platform League at RoboCup 2010 in Singapore
RoboCup
–
Team rUNSWift competing in the 4-Legged League at Bremen, Germany, 2006
RoboCup
–
Team CASualty competing in the Rescue Robot League at Singapore, 2010
8.
Transhumanism
–
Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the ethics of using such technologies. The transhumanist philosophies of Max More and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner have been influenced strongly by Nietzschean thinking, by way of contrast, The Transhumanist Declaration. advocates the well-being of all sentience. Fundamental ideas of transhumanism were first advanced in 1923 by the British geneticist J. B. S, in particular, he was interested in the development of the science of eugenics, ectogenesis, and the application of genetics to improve human characteristics, such as health and intelligence. His article inspired academic and popular interest and these ideas have been common transhumanist themes ever since. The biologist Julian Huxley is generally regarded as the founder of transhumanism, the term itself, however, derives from an earlier 1940 paper by the Canadian philosopher W. D. Lighthall. Huxleys definition differs, albeit not substantially, from the one commonly in use since the 1980s, the ideas raised by these thinkers were explored in the science fiction of the 1960s, notably in Arthur C. Clarkes 2001, A Space Odyssey, in which an alien artifact grants transcendent power to its wielder, japanese Metabolist architects produced a manifesto in 1960 which outlined goals to encourage active metabolic development of our society through design and technology. What I think will be known by all the people, there is no more individual consciousness, only the will of mankind as a whole. The concept of the singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence, was first proposed by the British cryptologist I. J. Good in 1965, Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the activities of any man however clever. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, computer scientist Marvin Minsky wrote on relationships between human and artificial intelligence beginning in the 1960s. The coalescence of an identifiable transhumanist movement began in the last decades of the 20th century, in 1972, Robert Ettinger contributed to the conceptualization of transhumanity in his book Man into Superman. FM-2030 published the Upwingers Manifesto in 1973, the first self-described transhumanists met formally in the early 1980s at the University of California, Los Angeles, which became the main center of transhumanist thought. Here, FM-2030 lectured on his Third Way futurist ideology, FM-2030 and Vita-More soon began holding gatherings for transhumanists in Los Angeles, which included students from FM-2030s courses and audiences from Vita-Mores artistic productions. In 1982, Vita-More authored the Transhumanist Arts Statement and, six years later, produced the cable TV show TransCentury Update on transhumanity, a program which reached over 100,000 viewers. In 1986, Eric Drexler published Engines of Creation, The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, which discussed the prospects for nanotechnology and molecular assemblers, and founded the Foresight Institute. As the first non-profit organization to research, advocate for, and perform cryonics, in 1988, the first issue of Extropy Magazine was published by Max More and Tom Morrow. Transhumanism shares many elements of humanism, including a respect for reason and science, a commitment to progress, Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies
Transhumanism
–
Julian Huxley, the biologist who popularised the term transhumanism in an influential 1957 essay.
Transhumanism
–
Cover of the first issue of
H+ Magazine, a web-based quarterly publication that focuses on transhumanism.
Transhumanism
–
Raymond Kurzweil believes that a countdown to when "human life will be irreversibly transformed" can be made through plotting major world events on a graph.
9.
Orthosis
–
Orthotics is a specialty within the medical field concerned with the design, manufacture and application of orthoses. An orthosis is an externally applied device used to modify the structural and functional characteristics of the neuromuscular, an orthotist is the primary medical clinician responsible for the prescription, manufacture and management of orthoses. Patients who benefit from an orthosis may have a such as spina bifida or cerebral palsy. Equally, orthoses are sometimes used prophylactically or to optimise performance in sport, orthoses were traditionally made by following a tracing of the extremity with measurements to assist in creating a well-fitted device. Subsequently, the advent of plastics as a material of choice for construction necessitated the idea of creating a plaster of Paris mould of the part in question. This method is extensively used throughout the industry. Currently, CAD/CAM, CNC machines and 3D printing are involved in orthotic manufacture, orthoses are made from various types of materials including thermoplastics, carbon fibre, metals, elastic, EVA, fabric or a combination of similar materials. Some designs may be purchased at a retailer, others are more specific and require a prescription from a physician. Over-the-counter braces are basic and available in multiple sizes and they are generally slid on or strapped on with Velcro, and are held tightly in place. One of the purposes of these braces is injury protection, under the International Standard terminology, orthoses are classified by an acronym describing the anatomical joints which they contain. For example, an ankle foot orthosis is applied to the foot and ankle and it is also useful to describe the function of the orthosis. Use of the International Standard is promoted to reduce the widespread variation in description of orthoses, in general, musculoskeletal problems that may be alleviated by the use of upper limb orthoses include those resulting from trauma or disease. They may also be beneficial in aiding individuals who have suffered a neurological impairment such as stroke, spinal cord injury, the term caliper or calipers remains in widespread use for lower-limb orthoses in the United Kingdom. Foot orthoses comprise a custom made insert or footbed fitted into a shoe, commonly referred to as orthotics these orthoses provide support for the foot by redistributing ground reaction forces as well as realigning foot joints while standing, walking or running. They are used by everyone from athletes to the elderly to accommodate biomechanical deformities and they may also be used in conjunction with properly fitted orthopaedic footwear in the prevention of foot ulcers in the at-risk diabetic foot. An ankle-foot orthosis is an orthosis or brace that encumbers the ankle, AFOs are externally applied and intended to control position and motion of the ankle, compensate for weakness, or correct deformities. AFOs can be used to support limbs, or to position a limb with contracted muscles into a more normal position. They are also used to immobilize the ankle and lower leg in the presence of arthritis or fracture, and to correct foot drop, ankle-foot orthoses are the most commonly used orthoses, making up about 26% of all orthoses provided in the United States
Orthosis
–
An ankle foot orthosis (AFO) brace is a type of orthotic. Here it is being used to support the foot due to
foot drop, caused by
multiple sclerosis.
Orthosis
–
An AFO worn on the left foot with ankle hinge
Orthosis
–
Two different spinal orthoses used to treat
scoliosis
Orthosis
–
Codification of Orthotics, drawn by Harry Gouvas
10.
Prosthesis
–
In medicine, a prosthesis is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through trauma, disease, or congenital conditions. A persons prosthetics should be designed and assembled according to the patients appearance, for instance, a patient may need a transradial prosthesis, but need to choose between an aesthetic functional device, a myoelectric device, a body-powered device, or an activity specific device. The patients future goals and economical capabilities may help choose between one or more devices. Craniofacial prostheses include intra-oral and extra-oral prostheses, extra-oral prostheses are further divided into hemifacial, auricular, nasal, orbital and ocular. Intra-oral prostheses include dental prostheses such as dentures, obturators, limb prostheses include both upper- and lower-extremity prostheses. A transradial prosthesis is a limb that replaces an arm missing below the elbow. Two main types of prosthetics are available, cable operated limbs work by attaching a harness and cable around the opposite shoulder of the damaged arm. The other form of prosthetics available are myoelectric arms and these work by sensing, via electrodes, when the muscles in the upper arm move, causing an artificial hand to open or close. In the prosthetic industry a trans-radial prosthetic arm is referred to as a BE or below elbow prosthesis. Lower-extremity prostheses provide replacements at varying levels of amputation and these include hip disarticulation, transfemoral prosthesis, knee disarticulation, transtibial prosthesis, Symes amputation, foot, partial foot, and toe. The two main subcategories of lower extremity prosthetic devices are trans-tibial and trans-femoral, a transfemoral prosthesis is an artificial limb that replaces a leg missing above the knee. Transfemoral amputees can have a difficult time regaining normal movement. In general, a transfemoral amputee must use approximately 80% more energy to walk than a person with two whole legs and this is due to the complexities in movement associated with the knee. In the prosthetic industry a trans-femoral prosthetic leg is often referred to as an AK or above the knee prosthesis, a transtibial prosthesis is an artificial limb that replaces a leg missing below the knee. A transtibial amputee is usually able to regain normal movement more readily than someone with an amputation, due in large part to retaining the knee. Lower extremity prosthetics describes artificially replaced limbs located at the hip level or lower, in the prosthetic industry a trans-tibial prosthetic leg is often referred to as a BK or below the knee prosthesis. Prosthetics have been mentioned throughout history, the earliest recorded mention is the warrior queen Vishpala in the Rigveda. The Egyptians were early pioneers of the idea, as shown by the wooden toe found on a body from the New Kingdom, roman bronze crowns have also been found, but their use could have been more aesthetic than medical
Prosthesis
–
A man with two prosthetic arms playing
table football
Prosthesis
–
A
United States Marine with bilateral prosthetic legs leads a formation run
Prosthesis
–
Prosthetic toe from ancient Egypt
Prosthesis
–
Iron prosthetic hand believed to have been owned by Götz von Berlichingen (1480–1562)
11.
Software
–
Computer software, or simply software, is that part of a computer system that consists of data or computer instructions, in contrast to the physical hardware from which the system is built. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all information processed by computer systems, programs, computer software includes computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data, such as online documentation or digital media. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be used on its own. At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit, a machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to jump to a different instruction, the majority of software is written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for programmers, meaning closer to a natural language. High-level languages are translated into machine language using a compiler or an interpreter or a combination of the two, an outline for what would have been the first piece of software was written by Ada Lovelace in the 19th century, for the planned Analytical Engine. However, neither the Analytical Engine nor any software for it were ever created, the first theory about software—prior to creation of computers as we know them today—was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. This eventually led to the creation of the academic fields of computer science and software engineering. Computer science is more theoretical, whereas software engineering focuses on practical concerns. However, prior to 1946, software as we now understand it—programs stored in the memory of stored-program digital computers—did not yet exist, the first electronic computing devices were instead rewired in order to reprogram them. On virtually all platforms, software can be grouped into a few broad categories. There are many different types of software, because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large—see list of software. System software includes, Operating systems, which are collections of software that manage resources and provides common services for other software that runs on top of them. Supervisory programs, boot loaders, shells and window systems are parts of operating systems. In practice, an operating system bundled with additional software so that a user can potentially do some work with a computer that only has an operating system. Device drivers, which operate or control a particular type of device that is attached to a computer, utilities, which are computer programs designed to assist users in the maintenance and care of their computers
Software
12.
Artificial intelligence
–
Artificial intelligence is intelligence exhibited by machines. Colloquially, the artificial intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning. As machines become increasingly capable, mental facilities once thought to require intelligence are removed from the definition, for instance, optical character recognition is no longer perceived as an example of artificial intelligence, having become a routine technology. AI research is divided into subfields that focus on specific problems or on specific approaches or on the use of a tool or towards satisfying particular applications. The central problems of AI research include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception, general intelligence is among the fields long-term goals. Approaches include statistical methods, computational intelligence, and traditional symbolic AI, Many tools are used in AI, including versions of search and mathematical optimization, logic, methods based on probability and economics. The AI field draws upon computer science, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, the field was founded on the claim that human intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. Some people also consider AI a danger to humanity if it progresses unabatedly, while thought-capable artificial beings appeared as storytelling devices in antiquity, the idea of actually trying to build a machine to perform useful reasoning may have begun with Ramon Llull. With his Calculus ratiocinator, Gottfried Leibniz extended the concept of the calculating machine, since the 19th century, artificial beings are common in fiction, as in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein or Karel Čapeks R. U. R. The study of mechanical or formal reasoning began with philosophers and mathematicians in antiquity, in the 19th century, George Boole refined those ideas into propositional logic and Gottlob Frege developed a notational system for mechanical reasoning. Around the 1940s, Alan Turings theory of computation suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as 0 and 1 and this insight, that digital computers can simulate any process of formal reasoning, is known as the Church–Turing thesis. Along with concurrent discoveries in neurology, information theory and cybernetics, the first work that is now generally recognized as AI was McCullouch and Pitts 1943 formal design for Turing-complete artificial neurons. The field of AI research was born at a conference at Dartmouth College in 1956, attendees Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and Arthur Samuel became the founders and leaders of AI research. At the conference, Newell and Simon, together with programmer J. C, shaw, presented the first true artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist. This spurred tremendous research in the domain, computers were winning at checkers, solving problems in algebra, proving logical theorems. By the middle of the 1960s, research in the U. S. was heavily funded by the Department of Defense and laboratories had been established around the world. AIs founders were optimistic about the future, Herbert Simon predicted, machines will be capable, within twenty years, Marvin Minsky agreed, writing, within a generation. The problem of creating artificial intelligence will substantially be solved and they failed to recognize the difficulty of some of the remaining tasks
Artificial intelligence
–
Kismet, a robot with rudimentary social skills
Artificial intelligence
–
An ontology represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts.
Artificial intelligence
–
Main articles
13.
Algorithm
–
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a self-contained sequence of actions to be performed. Algorithms can perform calculation, data processing and automated reasoning tasks, an algorithm is an effective method that can be expressed within a finite amount of space and time and in a well-defined formal language for calculating a function. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic, some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, giving a formal definition of algorithms, corresponding to the intuitive notion, remains a challenging problem. In English, it was first used in about 1230 and then by Chaucer in 1391, English adopted the French term, but it wasnt until the late 19th century that algorithm took on the meaning that it has in modern English. Another early use of the word is from 1240, in a manual titled Carmen de Algorismo composed by Alexandre de Villedieu and it begins thus, Haec algorismus ars praesens dicitur, in qua / Talibus Indorum fruimur bis quinque figuris. Which translates as, Algorism is the art by which at present we use those Indian figures, the poem is a few hundred lines long and summarizes the art of calculating with the new style of Indian dice, or Talibus Indorum, or Hindu numerals. An informal definition could be a set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations, which would include all computer programs, including programs that do not perform numeric calculations. Generally, a program is only an algorithm if it stops eventually, but humans can do something equally useful, in the case of certain enumerably infinite sets, They can give explicit instructions for determining the nth member of the set, for arbitrary finite n. An enumerably infinite set is one whose elements can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the integers, the concept of algorithm is also used to define the notion of decidability. That notion is central for explaining how formal systems come into being starting from a set of axioms. In logic, the time that an algorithm requires to complete cannot be measured, from such uncertainties, that characterize ongoing work, stems the unavailability of a definition of algorithm that suits both concrete and abstract usage of the term. Algorithms are essential to the way computers process data, thus, an algorithm can be considered to be any sequence of operations that can be simulated by a Turing-complete system. Although this may seem extreme, the arguments, in its favor are hard to refute. Gurevich. Turings informal argument in favor of his thesis justifies a stronger thesis, according to Savage, an algorithm is a computational process defined by a Turing machine. Typically, when an algorithm is associated with processing information, data can be read from a source, written to an output device. Stored data are regarded as part of the state of the entity performing the algorithm. In practice, the state is stored in one or more data structures, for some such computational process, the algorithm must be rigorously defined, specified in the way it applies in all possible circumstances that could arise. That is, any conditional steps must be dealt with, case-by-case
Algorithm
–
Alan Turing's statue at
Bletchley Park.
Algorithm
–
Logical NAND algorithm implemented electronically in
7400 chip
14.
Space exploration
–
Space exploration is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuously evolving and growing space technology. While the study of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of exploration was driven by a Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. With the substantial completion of the ISS following STS-133 in March 2011, constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020 was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009. In the 2000s, the Peoples Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, from the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then public space exploration of the Moon. After the war, the U. S. used German scientists, the first scientific exploration from space was the cosmic radiation experiment launched by the U. S. on a V-2 rocket on 10 May 1946. The first images of Earth taken from space followed the year while the first animal experiment saw fruit flies lifted into space in 1947. Starting in 1947, the Soviets, also with the help of German teams, launched sub-orbital V-2 rockets and their own variant and these suborbital experiments only allowed a very short time in space which limited their usefulness. The first successful launch was of the Soviet unmanned Sputnik 1 mission on 4 October 1957. The satellite weighed about 83 kg, and is believed to have orbited Earth at a height of about 250 km and it had two radio transmitters, which emitted beeps that could be heard by radios around the globe. Analysis of the signals was used to gather information about the electron density of the ionosphere. The results indicated that the satellite was not punctured by a meteoroid, Sputnik 1 was launched by an R-7 rocket. It burned up upon re-entry on 3 January 1958, the second one was Sputnik 2. Launched by the USSR on November 3,1957, it carried the dog Laika and this success led to an escalation of the American space program, which unsuccessfully attempted to launch a Vanguard satellite into orbit two months later. On 31 January 1958, the U. S. successfully orbited Explorer 1 on a Juno rocket, the first successful human spaceflight was Vostok 1, carrying 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961. The spacecraft completed one orbit around the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes, gagarins flight resonated around the world, it was a demonstration of the advanced Soviet space program and it opened an entirely new era in space exploration, human spaceflight. The U. S. first launched a person into space within a month of Vostok 1 with Alan Shepards suborbital flight in Mercury-Redstone 3, orbital flight was achieved by the United States when John Glenns Mercury-Atlas 6 orbited Earth on 20 February 1962. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, orbited Earth 48 times aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963
Space exploration
–
Saturn V rocket, used for the American manned lunar landing missions
Space exploration
–
The Moon as seen in a digitally processed image from data collected during a spacecraft flyby
Space exploration
–
The Paris Gun's shells achieved sub-orbital flights over 40 km in altitude
Space exploration
–
Timeline of Solar System exploration.
15.
Spaceflight
–
Spaceflight is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board, examples of human spaceflight include the U. S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of unmanned spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth and these operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous. Spaceflight is used in exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites, a spaceflight typically begins with a rocket launch, which provides the initial thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propels the spacecraft from the surface of the Earth. Once in space, the motion of a spacecraft—both when unpropelled, some spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, some disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and others reach a planetary or lunar surface for landing or impact. The first theoretical proposal of space using rockets was published by Scottish astronomer and mathematician William Leitch. More well-known is Konstantin Tsiolkovskys work, Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами, spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddards publication in 1919 of his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. His application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets improved efficiency enough for travel to become possible. He also proved in the laboratory that rockets would work in the vacuum of space, nonetheless and his attempt to secure an Army contract for a rocket-propelled weapon in the first World War was defeated by the November 11,1918 armistice with Germany. Nonetheless, Goddards paper was influential on Hermann Oberth, who in turn influenced Wernher von Braun. Von Braun became the first to produce modern rockets as guided weapons, von Brauns V-2 was the first rocket to reach space, at an altitude of 189 kilometers on a June 1944 test flight. At the end of World War II, von Braun and most of his rocket team surrendered to the United States, over the same period, the Soviet Union secretly tried but failed to develop the N1 rocket to give them the capability to land one person on the Moon. Rockets are the only means currently capable of reaching orbit or beyond, other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies have yet to be built, or remain short of orbital speeds. Spaceports are situated away from human habitation for noise and safety reasons. ICBMs have various special launching facilities, a launch is often restricted to certain launch windows. These windows depend upon the position of bodies and orbits relative to the launch site. The biggest influence is often the rotation of the Earth itself, once launched, orbits are normally located within relatively constant flat planes at a fixed angle to the axis of the Earth, and the Earth rotates within this orbit
Spaceflight
Spaceflight
–
Tsiolkovsky, early space theorist
Spaceflight
–
Saturn V on the launch pad before the launch of
Apollo 4
Spaceflight
–
Launched in 1959,
Luna 1 was the first known man-made object to achieve escape velocity from the Earth. (replica pictured)
16.
Earth
–
Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
Earth
–
"
The Blue Marble " photograph of Earth, taken during the
Apollo 17 lunar mission in 1972
Earth
–
Artist's impression of the early Solar System's planetary disk
Earth
–
World map color-coded by relative height
Earth
–
The summit of
Chimborazo, in Ecuador, is the point on Earth's surface farthest from its center.
17.
Sensor
–
A sensor is always used with other electronics, whether as simple as a light or as complex as a computer. Moreover, analog sensors such as potentiometers and force-sensing resistors are still widely used, applications include manufacturing and machinery, airplanes and aerospace, cars, medicine, robotics and many other aspects of our day-to-day life. A sensors sensitivity indicates how much the output changes when the input quantity being measured changes. For instance, if the mercury in a thermometer moves 1 cm when the changes by 1 °C. Some sensors can also affect what they measure, for instance, Sensors are usually designed to have a small effect on what is measured, making the sensor smaller often improves this and may introduce other advantages. Technological progress allows more and more sensors to be manufactured on a scale as microsensors using MEMS technology. In most cases, a microsensor reaches a higher speed. Most sensors have a transfer function. The sensitivity is defined as the ratio between the output signal and measured property. For example, if a sensor measures temperature and has a voltage output, the sensitivity is the slope of the transfer function. Converting the sensors electrical output to the measured units requires dividing the output by the slope. In addition, an offset is added or subtracted. For example -40 must be added to the output if 0 V output corresponds to -40 C input, for an analog sensor signal to be processed, or used in digital equipment, it needs to be converted to a digital signal, using an analog-to-digital converter. The full scale range defines the maximum and minimum values of the measured property, the sensitivity may in practice differ from the value specified. This is called a sensitivity error and this is an error in the slope of a linear transfer function. If the output differs from the correct value by a constant. This is an error in the y-intercept of a transfer function. Nonlinearity is deviation of a transfer function from a straight line transfer function
Sensor
–
An infrared sensor
18.
Robotic paradigms
–
In robotics, a robotic paradigm is a mental model of how a robot operates. A robotic paradigm can be described by the relationship between the three primitives of robotics, Sense Plan Act and it can also be described by how sensory data is processed and distributed through the system, and where decisions are made. The robot operates in a fashion, heavy on planning. The robot senses the world, plans the next action, acts, all the sensing data tends to be gathered into one global world model. The robot has multiple instances of Sense-Act couplings and these couplings are concurrent processes, called behaviours, which take the local sensing data and compute the best action to take independently of what the other processes are doing. The robot will do a combination of behaviours, the robot first plans how to best decompose a task into subtasks and then what are the suitable behaviours to accomplish each subtask. Then the behaviours starts executing as per the Reactive Paradigm, behavior-based robotics Hierarchical control system Subsumption architecture Asada, H. & Slotine, J. -J
Robotic paradigms
–
Hierarchical Paradigm schema
19.
Proprioceptive
–
In humans, it is provided by proprioceptors in skeletal striated muscles and tendons and the fibrous capsules in joints. It is distinguished from exteroception, by which one perceives the world, and interoception, by which one perceives pain, hunger, etc. The brain integrates information from proprioception and from the system into its overall sense of body position, movement. The position-movement sensation was originally described in 1557 by Julius Caesar Scaliger as a sense of locomotion, much later, in 1826, Charles Bell expounded the idea of a muscle sense, which is credited as one of the first descriptions of physiologic feedback mechanisms. Bells idea was that commands are carried from the brain to the muscles, in 1889, Alfred Goldscheider suggested a classification of kinaesthesia into three types, muscle, tendon, and articular sensitivity. In 1906, Charles Scott Sherrington published a work that introduced the terms proprioception, interoception. The exteroceptors are the organs that provide information originating outside the body, such as the eyes, ears, mouth, the interoceptors provide information about the internal organs, and the proprioceptors provide information about movement derived from muscular, tendon, and articular sources. Primary endings of muscle spindles respond to the size of a length change and its speed. Secondary endings of muscle spindles detect changes in length. Essentially, muscle spindles are stretch receptors, a major component of proprioception is joint position sense, which is determined by measuring the accuracy of joint–angle replication. These involve an individuals ability to perceive the position of a joint without the aid of vision, often it is assumed that the ability of one of these aspects will be related to another, however, experimental evidence suggests there is no strong relation between these two aspects. This suggests that while these components may well be related in a cognitive manner, more recent work into the mechanism of ankle sprains suggests that the role of reflexes may be more limited due to their long latencies, as ankle sprain events occur in perhaps 100 ms or less. In accordance, a model has been proposed to include a component of proprioception. Kinesthesia is a key component in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination, the ability to swing a golf club or to catch a ball requires a finely tuned sense of the position of the joints. This sense needs to become automatic through training to enable a person to concentrate on other aspects of performance, the initiation of proprioception is the activation of a proprioreceptor in the periphery. There are specific receptors for this form of perception termed proprioreceptors, just as there are specific receptors for pressure, light, temperature, sound. Proprioreceptors are sometimes known as adequate stimuli receptors, TRPN, a member of the transient receptor potential family of ion channels, has been found to be responsible for proprioception in fruit flies, nematode worms, African clawed frogs, and zebrafish. Piezo2, a cation channel, has been shown to underlie the mechanosensitivity of proprioceptors in mice
Proprioceptive
–
The
cerebellum is largely responsible for coordinating the unconscious aspects of proprioception.
20.
Accelerometer
–
An accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration, proper acceleration is not the same as coordinate acceleration. For example, an accelerometer at rest on the surface of the Earth will measure an acceleration due to Earths gravity, by contrast, accelerometers in free fall will measure zero. Accelerometers have multiple applications in industry and science, highly sensitive accelerometers are components of inertial navigation systems for aircraft and missiles. Accelerometers are used to detect and monitor vibration in rotating machinery, accelerometers are used in tablet computers and digital cameras so that images on screens are always displayed upright. Accelerometers are used in drones for flight stabilisation, coordinated accelerometers can be used to measure differences in proper acceleration, particularly gravity, over their separation in space, i. e. gradient of the gravitational field. This gravity gradiometry is useful because absolute gravity is a weak effect, micromachined accelerometers are increasingly present in portable electronic devices and video game controllers, to detect the position of the device or provide for game input. An accelerometer measures proper acceleration, which is the acceleration it experiences relative to freefall and is the acceleration felt by people and objects. Put another way, at any point in spacetime the equivalence principle guarantees the existence of an inertial frame. Such accelerations are popularly denoted g-force, i. e. in comparison to standard gravity, an accelerometer at rest relative to the Earths surface will indicate approximately 1 g upwards, because any point on the Earths surface is accelerating upwards relative to the local inertial frame. The reason for the appearance of an offset is Einsteins equivalence principle. For similar reasons, an accelerometer will read zero during any type of free fall and this includes use in a coasting spaceship in deep space far from any mass, a spaceship orbiting the Earth, an airplane in a parabolic zero-g arc, or any free-fall in vacuum. Another example is free-fall at a high altitude that atmospheric effects can be neglected. However this does not include a fall in air resistance produces drag forces that reduce the acceleration. At terminal velocity the accelerometer will indicate 1 g acceleration upwards, Acceleration is quantified in the SI unit metres per second per second, in the cgs unit gal, or popularly in terms of standard gravity. For the practical purpose of finding the acceleration of objects with respect to the Earth, such as for use in a navigation system. This can be obtained either by calibrating the device at rest, conceptually, an accelerometer behaves as a damped mass on a spring. When the accelerometer experiences an acceleration, the mass is displaced to the point that the spring is able to accelerate the mass at the rate as the casing. The displacement is measured to give the acceleration
Accelerometer
–
A depiction of an accelerometer designed at
Sandia National Laboratories
21.
Tactile sensor
–
A tactile sensor is a device that measures information arising from physical interaction with its environment. Tactile sensors are generally modeled after the biological sense of touch which is capable of detecting stimuli resulting from mechanical stimulation, temperature. Tactile sensors are used in robotics, computer hardware and security systems, a common application of tactile sensors is in touchscreen devices on mobile phones and computing. Tactile sensors may be of different types including piezoresistive, piezoelectric, Tactile sensors appear in everyday life such as elevator buttons and lamps which dim or brighten by touching the base. There are also innumerable applications for tactile sensors of which most people are never aware, Sensors that measure very small changes must have very high sensitivities. Sensors need to be designed to have an effect on what is measured, making the sensor smaller often improves this. Tactile sensors can be used to test the performance of all types of applications, for example, these sensors have been used in the manufacturing of automobiles, battery lamination, bolted joints, fuel cells etc. Tactile imaging, as an imaging modality, translating the sense of touch into a digital image is based on the tactile sensors. Tactile sensors have been developed for use with robots, Tactile sensors can complement visual systems by providing added information when the robot begins to grip an object. At this time vision is no longer sufficient, as the properties of the object cannot be determined by vision alone. Determining weight, texture, stiffness, center of mass, coefficient of friction, several classes of tactile sensors are used in robots in warfare and engineering Pressure sensor arrays are large grids of tactels. A tactel is a ‘tactile element’, each tactel is capable of detecting normal forces. Tactel-based sensors provide a high resolution ‘image’ of the contact surface, alongside spatial resolution and force sensitivity, systems-integration questions such as wiring and signal routing are important. Pressure sensor arrays are available in thin-film form and they are primarily used as analytical tools used in the manufacturing and R&D processes by engineers and technicians, and have been adapted for use in robots. Strain gauges rosettes are constructed from multiple strain gauges, with each gauge detecting the force in a particular direction, when the information from each strain gauge is combined, the information allows determination of a pattern of forces or torques. Biologically inspired tactile sensors often incorporate more than one sensing strategy, such interactions are now understood to be important for human tool use and judging the texture of an object. One such sensor combines force sensing, vibration sensing, and heat transfer sensing, recently, a sophisticated tactile sensor has been made open-hardware, enabling enthusiasts and hobbyists to experiment with an otherwise expensive technology. Furthermore, with the advent of optical cameras, novel sensors have been proposed which can be built easily and cheaply with a 3D printer
Tactile sensor
–
The SynTouch BioTac, a multimodal tactile sensor modeled after the human fingertip
22.
Shadow Hand
–
The Shadow Dexterous Hand is a humaniform robot hand system developed by The Shadow Robot Company in London. The hand is comparable to a hand in size and shape. The Shadow Dexterous Robot Hand is the first commercially available robot hand from the company, the Shadow Dexterous Hand has been designed to be similar to the average hand of a human male. The forearm structure is slightly wider than a human forearm, the Shadow Dexterous Hand has 24 joints. It has 20 degrees of freedom, greater than that of a human hand and it has been designed to have a range of movement equivalent to that of a typical human being. The four fingers of the hand contain two one-axis joints connecting the distal phalanx, middle phalanx and proximal phalanx and one universal joint connecting the finger to the metacarpal, the little finger has an extra one-axis joint on the metacarpal to provide the Hand with a palm curl movement. The wrist contains two joints, providing flex/extend and adduct/abduct, the hand is available in both electric motor driven and pneumatic muscle driven models. The motor hand is driven by 20 DC motors in the forearm, all hands have Hall effect sensors integrated into every joint to provide precise positional feedback. The motor hand includes force sensors for each degree of freedom, there are also several options for tactile sensing on the hand from basic pressure sensors to the BioTac multimodal tactile sensor from Syntouch LLC. The Shadow Hand software system is based on Robot Operating System, through which configuration, calibration, simulation, a simulation of the Shadow hand can be downloaded and installed in ROS. es The Future of Things Article BioTac multimodal tactile sensor from Syntouch LLC
Shadow Hand
–
The Shadow C6M Smart Motor Hand in front of the Shadow C3 Dexterous Air Muscle Hand
Shadow Hand
–
Comparison of The Shadow Dexterous Hand with the human hand.
23.
Polyurethane
–
Polyurethane is a polymer composed of organic units joined by carbamate links. While most polyurethanes are thermosetting polymers that do not melt when heated, polyurethane polymers are traditionally and most commonly formed by reacting a di- or polyisocyanate with a polyol. Both the isocyanates and polyols used to make polyurethanes contain, on average, some noteworthy recent efforts have been dedicated to minimizing the use of isocyanates to synthesize polyurethanes, because the isocyanates raise severe toxicity issues. Non-isocyanate based polyurethanes have recently developed as a new class of polyurethane polymers to mitigate health. Polyurethane products often are simply called “urethanes”, but should not be confused with ethyl carbamate, polyurethanes neither contain nor are produced from ethyl carbamate. Otto Bayer and his coworkers at IG Farben in Leverkusen, Germany, the new polymers had some advantages over existing plastics that were made by polymerizing olefins or by polycondensation, and were not covered by patents obtained by Wallace Carothers on polyesters. Early work focused on the production of fibres and flexible foams, polyisocyanates became commercially available in 1952, and production of flexible polyurethane foam began in 1954 using toluene diisocyanate and polyester polyols. These materials were used to produce rigid foams, gum rubber. Linear fibers were produced from hexamethylene diisocyanate and 1, 4-butanediol, in 1956 DuPont introduced polyether polyols, specifically poly glycol, and BASF and Dow Chemical started selling polyalkylene glycols in 1957. Polyether polyols were cheaper, easier to handle and more water-resistant than polyester polyols, union Carbide and Mobay, a U. S. Monsanto/Bayer joint venture, also began making polyurethane chemicals. In 1960 more than 45,000 metric tons of flexible polyurethane foams were produced, in 1967, urethane-modified polyisocyanurate rigid foams were introduced, offering even better thermal stability and flammability resistance. During the 1960s, automotive interior safety components, such as instrument, in 1969, Bayer exhibited an all-plastic car in Düsseldorf, Germany. Further increases in stiffness were obtained by incorporating pre-placed glass mats into the RIM mold cavity, also known broadly as resin injection molding, polyurethane foams are now used in high-temperature oil filter applications. Polyurethane foam is made using small amounts of blowing agents to give less dense foam. In the early 1990s, because of their impact on ozone depletion, polyurethanes are in the class of compounds called reaction polymers, which include epoxies, unsaturated polyesters, and phenolics. The properties of a polyurethane are greatly influenced by the types of isocyanates, long, flexible segments, contributed by the polyol, give soft, elastic polymer. High amounts of crosslinking give tough or rigid polymers, the crosslinking present in polyurethanes means that the polymer consists of a three-dimensional network and molecular weight is very high. In some respects a piece of polyurethane can be regarded as one giant molecule, one consequence of this is that typical polyurethanes do not soften or melt when they are heated, they are thermosetting polymers
Polyurethane
24.
Computer vision
–
Computer vision is an interdisciplinary field that deals with how computers can be made for gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the visual system can do. g. in the forms of decisions. Understanding in this means the transformation of visual images into descriptions of the world that can interface with other thought processes. This image understanding can be seen as the disentangling of symbolic information from image data using models constructed with the aid of geometry, physics, statistics, as a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory behind artificial systems that extract information from images. The image data can take many forms, such as sequences, views from multiple cameras. As a technological discipline, computer vision seeks to apply its theories, sub-domains of computer vision include scene reconstruction, event detection, video tracking, object recognition, object pose estimation, learning, indexing, motion estimation, and image restoration. Computer vision is a field that deals with how computers can be made for gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the visual system can do. Computer vision is concerned with the extraction, analysis and understanding of useful information from a single image or a sequence of images. It involves the development of a theoretical and algorithmic basis to achieve automatic visual understanding, as a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory behind artificial systems that extract information from images. The image data can take many forms, such as sequences, views from multiple cameras. As a technological discipline, computer vision seeks to apply its theories, in the late 1960s, computer vision began at universities that were pioneering artificial intelligence. It was meant to mimic the visual system, as a stepping stone to endowing robots with intelligent behavior. In 1966, it was believed that this could be achieved through a project, by attaching a camera to a computer. The next decade saw studies based on rigorous mathematical analysis. These include the concept of scale-space, the inference of shape from various cues such as shading, texture and focus, researchers also realized that many of these mathematical concepts could be treated within the same optimization framework as regularization and Markov random fields. By the 1990s, some of the research topics became more active than the others. Research in projective 3-D reconstructions led to better understanding of camera calibration, with the advent of optimization methods for camera calibration, it was realized that a lot of the ideas were already explored in bundle adjustment theory from the field of photogrammetry
Computer vision
–
Artist's Concept of Rover on Mars, an example of an unmanned land-based vehicle. Notice the
stereo cameras mounted on top of the Rover.
Computer vision
–
Relation between computer vision and various other fields [
original research?]
25.
Charge-coupled device
–
A charge-coupled device is a device for the movement of electrical charge, usually from within the device to an area where the charge can be manipulated, for example conversion into a digital value. This is achieved by shifting the signals between stages within the one at a time. CCDs move charge between capacitive bins in the device, with the shift allowing for the transfer of charge between bins, in recent years CCD has become a major technology for digital imaging. In a CCD image sensor, pixels are represented by p-doped metal-oxide-semiconductors capacitors, the charge-coupled device was invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith. The lab was working on bubble memory when Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed, in their notebook. The device could be used as a shift register, the essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor from one storage capacitor to the next. The concept was similar in principle to the device, which was developed at Philips Research Labs during the late 1960s. The first patent on the application of CCDs to imaging was assigned to Michael Tompsett, the initial paper describing the concept listed possible uses as a memory, a delay line, and an imaging device. The first experimental device demonstrating the principle was a row of closely spaced metal squares on a silicon surface electrically accessed by wire bonds. The first working CCD made with integrated circuit technology was a simple 8-bit shift register and this device had input and output circuits and was used to demonstrate its use as a shift register and as a crude eight pixel linear imaging device. Development of the device progressed at a rapid rate, by 1971, Bell researchers led by Michael Tompsett were able to capture images with simple linear devices. Several companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor, RCA and Texas Instruments, picked up on the invention, fairchilds effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2-D100 x 100 pixel device. Steven Sasson, an engineer working for Kodak, invented the first digital still camera using a Fairchild 100 x 100 CCD in 1975. The first KH-11 KENNAN reconnaissance satellite equipped with charge-coupled device array technology for imaging was launched in December 1976, under the leadership of Kazuo Iwama, Sony also started a large development effort on CCDs involving a significant investment. Eventually, Sony managed to mass-produce CCDs for their camcorders, before this happened, Iwama died in August 1982, subsequently, a CCD chip was placed on his tombstone to acknowledge his contribution. He was also awarded the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal For pioneering contributions to imaging devices including CCD Imagers, cameras, in a CCD for capturing images, there is a photoactive region, and a transmission region made out of a shift register. An image is projected through a lens onto the capacitor array, once the array has been exposed to the image, a control circuit causes each capacitor to transfer its contents to its neighbor. The last capacitor in the array dumps its charge into a charge amplifier, by repeating this process, the controlling circuit converts the entire contents of the array in the semiconductor to a sequence of voltages
Charge-coupled device
–
A specially developed CCD used for
ultraviolet imaging in a wire-bonded package
Charge-coupled device
–
George E. Smith and Willard Boyle, 2009
Charge-coupled device
–
"One-dimensional" CCD
image sensor from a
fax machine
Charge-coupled device
–
CCD from a 2.1
megapixel Argus digital camera
26.
Microphone
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A microphone, colloquially nicknamed mic or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Several different types of microphone are in use, which employ different methods to convert the air pressure variations of a wave to an electrical signal. Microphones typically need to be connected to a preamplifier before the signal can be recorded or reproduced, in order to speak to larger groups of people, a need arose to increase the volume of the human voice. The earliest devices used to achieve this were acoustic megaphones, some of the first examples, from fifth century BC Greece, were theater masks with horn-shaped mouth openings that acoustically amplified the voice of actors in amphitheatres. In 1665, the English physicist Robert Hooke was the first to experiment with an other than air with the invention of the lovers telephone made of stretched wire with a cup attached at each end. German inventor Johann Philipp Reis designed an early sound transmitter that used a strip attached to a vibrating membrane that would produce intermittent current. Better results were achieved with the transmitter design in Scottish-American Alexander Graham Bells telephone of 1876 – the diaphragm was attached to a conductive rod in an acid solution. These systems, however, gave a poor sound quality. The first microphone that enabled proper voice telephony was the carbon microphone and this was independently developed by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US. Although Edison was awarded the first patent in mid-1877, Hughes had demonstrated his working device in front of many witnesses some years earlier, the carbon microphone is the direct prototype of todays microphones and was critical in the development of telephony, broadcasting and the recording industries. Thomas Edison refined the carbon microphone into his carbon-button transmitter of 1886 and this microphone was employed at the first ever radio broadcast, a performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House in 1910. In 1916, E. C. Wente of Western Electric developed the next breakthrough with the first condenser microphone, in 1923, the first practical moving coil microphone was built. The Marconi Skykes or magnetophon, developed by Captain H. J. Round, was the standard for BBC studios in London and this was improved in 1930 by Alan Blumlein and Herbert Holman who released the HB1A and was the best standard of the day. Also in 1923, the microphone was introduced, another electromagnetic type, believed to have been developed by Harry F. Olson. Over the years these microphones were developed by companies, most notably RCA that made large advancements in pattern control. With television and film technology booming there was demand for high fidelity microphones, electro-Voice responded with their Academy Award-winning shotgun microphone in 1963. During the second half of 20th century development advanced quickly with the Shure Brothers bringing out the SM58, digital was pioneered by Milab in 1999 with the DM-1001. The latest research developments include the use of optics, lasers and interferometers
Microphone
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An
AKG C214 condenser microphone with
shock mount
Microphone
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A
Sennheiser dynamic microphone
Microphone
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David Edward Hughes invented a carbon microphone in the 1870s.
Microphone
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Jack Brown interviews
Humphrey Bogart and
Lauren Bacall for broadcast to troops overseas during World War II.
27.
Actuator
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An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. An actuator requires a signal and a source of energy. The control signal is low energy and may be electric voltage or current, pneumatic or hydraulic pressure. The supplied main energy source may be current, hydraulic fluid pressure. When the control signal is received, the actuator responds by converting the energy into mechanical motion, an actuator is the mechanism by which a control system acts upon an environment. The control system can be simple, software-based, a human, the history of the pneumatic actuation system and the hydraulic actuation system dates to around the time of World War II. A hydraulic actuator consists of cylinder or fluid motor that uses hydraulic power to mechanical operation. The mechanical motion gives an output in terms of linear, rotatory or oscillatory motion, as liquids are nearly impossible to compress, a hydraulic actuator can exert a large force. The drawback of this approach is its limited acceleration, the hydraulic cylinder consists of a hollow cylindrical tube along which a piston can slide. The term single acting is used when the pressure is applied to just one side of the piston. The piston can move in one direction, a spring being frequently used to give the piston a return stroke. The term double acting is used when pressure is applied on each side of the piston, a pneumatic actuator converts energy formed by vacuum or compressed air at high pressure into either linear or rotary motion. Pneumatic energy is desirable for main engine controls because it can respond in starting and stopping as the power source does not need to be stored in reserve for operation. Pneumatic actuators enable considerable forces to be produced relatively small pressure changes. These forces are used with valves to move diaphragms to affect the flow of liquid through the valve. An electric actuator is powered by a motor that converts electrical energy into mechanical torque, the electrical energy is used to actuate equipment such as multi-turn valves. It is one of the cleanest and most readily available forms of actuator because it does not directly involve oil or other fossil fuels, actuators which can be actuated by applying thermal or magnetic energy have been used in commercial applications. They tend to be compact, lightweight, economical and with high power density and these actuators use shape memory materials, such as shape memory alloys or magnetic shape-memory alloys
Actuator
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Pneumatic
rack and pinion actuators for valve controls of water pipes
28.
Joint
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A joint or articulation is the connection made between bones in the body which link the skeletal system into a functional whole. They are constructed to allow for different degrees and types of movement, other joints such as sutures between the bones of the skull permit very little movement in order to protect the brain and the sense organs. The connection between a tooth and the jawbone is also called a joint, and is described as a fibrous joint known as a gomphosis, joints are classified both structurally and functionally. Joints are mainly classified structurally and functionally, structural classification is determined by how the bones connect to each other, while functional classification is determined by the degree of movement between the articulating bones. In practice, there is significant overlap between the two types of classifications, a facet joint is the joint between two articular processes between two vertebrae. Structural classification names and divides joints according to the type of binding tissue that connects the bones to each other, joints can also be classified functionally according to the type and degree of movement they allow, Joint movements are described with reference to the basic anatomical planes. Synarthrosis – permits little or no mobility, most synarthrosis joints are fibrous joints. Most amphiarthrosis joints are cartilaginous joints, Synovial joints can in turn be classified into six groups according to the type of movement they allow, plane joint, ball and socket joint, hinge joint, pivot joint, condyloid joint and saddle joint. Joints can also be classified, according to the number of axes of movement they allow, another classification is according to the degrees of freedom allowed, and distinguished between joints with one, two or three degrees of freedom. A further classification is according to the number and shapes of the surfaces, flat, concave. Types of articular surfaces include trochlear surfaces, joints can also be classified based on their anatomy or on their biomechanical properties. Swimming is a way to exercise the joints with minimal damage. A joint disorder is termed arthropathy, and when involving inflammation of one or more joints the disorder is called arthritis, most joint disorders involve arthritis, but joint damage by external physical trauma is typically not termed arthritis. Arthropathies are called polyarticular when involving many joints and monoarticular when involving only a single joint, arthritis is the leading cause of disability in people over the age of 55. There are many different forms of arthritis, each of which has a different cause, furthermore, there is emerging evidence that abnormal anatomy may contribute to early development of osteoarthritis. Other forms of arthritis are rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, which are diseases in which the body is attacking itself. Septic arthritis is caused by joint infection, gouty arthritis is caused by deposition of uric acid crystals in the joint that results in subsequent inflammation. Additionally, there is a common form of gout that is caused by the formation of rhomboidal-shaped crystals of calcium pyrophosphate
Joint
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Diagram of a typical synovial (diarthrosis) joint
29.
Pneumatic
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Pneumatics is a branch of engineering that makes use of gas or pressurized air. Pneumatic systems used in industry are commonly powered by compressed air or compressed inert gases, a centrally located and electrically powered compressor powers cylinders, air motors, and other pneumatic devices. A pneumatic system controlled through manual or automatic solenoid valves is selected when it provides a lower cost, more flexible, pneumatics also has applications in dentistry, construction, mining, and other areas. Pneumatic systems in fixed installations, such as factories, use compressed air because a sustainable supply can be made by compressing atmospheric air, the air usually has moisture removed, and a small quantity of oil is added at the compressor to prevent corrosion and lubricate mechanical components. Factory-plumbed pneumatic-power users need not worry about poisonous leakage, as the gas is usually just air, smaller or stand-alone systems can use other compressed gases that present an asphyxiation hazard, such as nitrogen—often referred to as OFN when supplied in cylinders. Any compressed gas other than air is an asphyxiation hazard—including nitrogen, compressed oxygen would not asphyxiate, but is not used in pneumatically-powered devices because it is a fire hazard, more expensive, and offers no performance advantage over air. Carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant and can be a hazard if vented improperly. The origins of pneumatics can be traced back to the first century when ancient Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria wrote about his inventions powered by steam or the wind, german physicist Otto von Guericke went a little further. He invented the pump, a device that can draw out air or gas from the attached vessel. He demonstrated the vacuum pump to separate the pairs of copper hemispheres using air pressures, the field of pneumatics has changed considerably over the years. It has moved from small handheld devices to large machines with multiple parts that serve different functions, both pneumatics and hydraulics are applications of fluid power. Pneumatics uses an easily compressible gas such as air or a suitable pure gas—while hydraulics uses relatively incompressible liquid media such as oil, most industrial pneumatic applications use pressures of about 80 to 100 pounds per square inch. Hydraulics applications commonly use from 1,000 to 5,000 psi, simplicity of design and control—Machines are easily designed using standard cylinders and other components, and operate via simple on-off control. Reliability—Pneumatic systems generally have long operating lives and require little maintenance, because gas is compressible, equipment is less subject to shock damage. Gas absorbs excessive force, whereas fluid in hydraulics directly transfers force, compressed gas can be stored, so machines still run for a while if electrical power is lost. Safety—There is a low chance of fire compared to hydraulic oil. Newer machines are usually overload safe, liquid does not absorb any of the supplied energy. Capable of moving much higher loads and providing much higher due to the incompressibility
Pneumatic
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Preserved
Porter Locomotive Company No. 3290 of 1923.
