What Is Robotics???

Well, Here I am ....Shubhojit Chattopadhyay with my first post. After a long delay with personal issues, I finally managed to scrape out time for a long pending work. Now, the aim of this blog is to provide knowledge to everyone for free (the knowledge is free in any case) but there are always entrepreneurial sharks lurking around, trying to cash in on a student's earnest desires and then extracting thousands of bucks on things that would not cost more than 800 when made at home.

Ok, done with all the cribbing, lets have a look at what Robotics is. When we first saw the movie like Star wars, robots easily caught people's imagination. R2D2 the egg headed, metal cased bot moving on wheels was really thought of an attainable target. Can't we make a machine that moves on wheels (R2D2 was really intelligent, so let us stop at its motion and not consider its brains). More recently, Wall-e caught the imagination of everyone who like to see machines working on their own. Since movies usually turn out to be the brainchild of imagination, the idea that common man held of a robot was that of a machine that imitates human or more accurately a machine that replaces living kind. But the notion was completely wrong.

So what is a robot?

Wikipedia defines a robot as,"A robot is a virtual or mechanical artificial agent. In practice, it is usually an electro-mechanical system which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agencyof its own. The word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots.^[1] There is no consensus on which machines qualify as robots, but there is general agreement among experts and the public that robots tend to do some or all of the following: move around, operate a mechanical limb, sense and manipulate their environment, and exhibit intelligent behavior, especially behavior which mimics humans or other animals.".

?????Didn't understand?

Well, don't worry, neither did anyone of us when we read it the first time. There are many other definitions of a robot, each one as confusing as wikipedia, if not more. So, I came up with my own definition. "A Robot is a means to delegate mans work onto some other agent!!!Robotics is the study of increasing the utility and efficiency of robots!!!!"

Shocked?!

Well, all I would say that if it were not for the above reason,  man would have never taken the step forward in developing robotics. 

Robots started as a figment of human imagination, from fuel consuming machines.Then Robotics could have easily been defined as something mechanical as defined in Wikipedia (see, they are not always right). Now robots range from chemical,software and even abstract genres. Earlier, man thought of robot as two legged mechanical monstors. Now robots are small, wheeled, some have flippers to swim, some are directional and what not. 

Robotics is not limited to high tech stuff. Why even the toy car, that you use as a toy car is a remote controlled robot(think of it as an agent of getting some food from the kitchen using a remote).

Robotics is so vast, it is amazing that it isn't a major field of study for students already. Moving on from basic definitions, Robotics can broadly be classified as an amalgamation of Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering. 

Mechanical: This basically deals with the study of motion of the bot(short form of robot), the outer appearance, the distictive external features that make it look like say a snake to a common man. This is perhaps the most important part of robotics onsidering the fact this part needs to be inch perfect and precise in design and operation. Imagine a aqua bot with a small leakage!!!Also mechanical part deals with the actuators, that is the thing that provides stimulus for motion. Usually it is motors of various kinds but there are other actuators too used as necessary. However, Mechanical bodies can be overlooked in case of chemical, software etc robots.

Electrical: This basically deals with providing energy to the bot. The most common form of energy is electrical energy (You don't want to waste money on gas, do you?). Smaller bots may require lesser energy than larger ones, but it all depends on the amount of work that the robot is expected to do.

The above two fields are enough to make a simple remote controlled wired mechanical machine(whoa, huge name for a toy car). But limiting us to this would be sheer injustice to robots...ahem if they have any laws of justice. To make better and more useful robots, they are implanted with a brain. Here comes the role of Electronics and Computers.

Electronics: This deals with the smart handling of electrical energy in the bot and make it do things as desired. Electronics circuitsare used to drive motors as and when required. Electronics is required to sense data from surrounding if necessary. This is really important because without electronics, even the next stage i.e. computer is totally useless.

Computer: This is the brain of a bot. I hope you didn't expect bots to think on their own. This is what makes them intelligent systems.

But man comes over all of them. Without man, neither of the above things can be accomplised, so don't even bother about wondering what if robots take over the world and destoy human beings.

To summarize, I would say:

Man programs lines of code into a bot brain and this brain drives the electronics circuits, which motivates the actuators to get the mechanical blocks into motion.

Easy isn't it?If you're a complete novice, let me tell you one thing: No one knows everthing about every robot. Not even the best roboticist! People usually work only in teir field of interest or specialization and leave the rest to other specialists. That is unless, the system is so simple that everyone can do everything.

Well, hope you liked my post on what is robotics.Cya later