Monday, October 20, 2008

Robotics - Investigation

A robot is an autonomous machine that has four major parts that it uses to perform tasks. The four parts are, Sensors, Processors, Actuators and Power. Without these parts, a robot will not be able to perform any type of task. Sensors tell the robot what is around it. Just like we have five sensors, Vision, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touch, a robot can have many more like infrared, night vision, x-ray, etc. Robots need processors to think like we use our brain. Without the processor, the robot would not be able to make decisions. The information that the sensors gather would be useless because the processor is the only part of the robot that actually thinks and tells different parts of the robot what to do. Then comes the Actuators. They are the parts that move in the robot. They can be anything from wheels to pulleys, from levers to gears. The actuators gather information from the processor. The processor tells the actuators what to do. The actuators would be useless if there was no processor, but also useless if there was no power. The whole robot would be useless without power. Every living thing needs power. We get power from the food we eat. Animals get power from the food they eat. Plants get power from light and water but robots get power from electricity. There are two ways that a robot can get power. The first way is to supply the robot with power. This means that there is a wire connecting the robot to a power source and every second there is electricity going through the cable and then being used up by the robot. The second way that i think is much better is that the robot can make its own power. An amazing example is the Mars Rover. Humans haven't even figured out a way to get to Mars, how can they go there every week or so to change the battery. Instead the robot makes its own power. It has solar panels on it and when ever sunlight hits the panels, the Mars rover can produce power. This way, it can go on and on exploring. Exploring the surface of mars until the sun dies out. Without these essential components, a robot would not be able to function properly and would just become a piece of metal.