Last updated on: April 25, 2024
| Ability | Underlying technology | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Senses | Sensors | Sensors enable robots to be equipped with the equivalent of human senses such as vision, touch, and the ability to sense temperature. |
| Cognitive ability | Artificial Intelligence | Some are even capable of simple decision making. |
| Mobility | Wheels and Motors | Movement in 2D or 3D. |
Mechanical Components: strength of material, tensile strength of material, shape and structure
of components, strength and payload handeling capabilities of hinges, the physics and chemistry of
materials and the surrounding environment.
Electrical Components: capacity of electrical components such as motors, wires, batteries, sensors,
etc. Intercompability of components.
Software: The brain of robot. The decision making capability of a robot is because of the underlying
software. As the robot becomes more and more autonomous the role of software becomes more and more important.
The usage of robotics is increasing day by day. At present, this industry is valued at USD 45.85 Billion. This industry is expected to become USD 95.93 Billion by 2029.
Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs): uses sophisticated sensors, artificial intelligence, and machine
learning. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can support many tasks, including delivering items, carrying out
safety and security checks, inventory automation, rescue missions, crop harvesting, and even space
exploration.
Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs): It is a form of autonomous mobile robots, automated guided
vehicles (AGVs) are movable robots capable of navigating mapped routes via wires on a floor, radio waves,
cameras, magnets, or lasers. These robots have several applications, including transporting heavy materials
in factories and warehouses.
Articulated Robots: One of the main features of an articulated robot is rotary joints that can
range from simple two-jointed structures to complex systems of multiple interacting joints and materials.
The articulated robot is a typical type of industrial robot and often resembles a human arm.
Humanoids: A humanoid robot resembles a generic human body form. The specialized design is
typically used for mimicking human motions and interactions. A common use case of humanoid robots is
automating tasks to increase efficiency and cost-savings.
Cobots: A cobot is a contracted term for a collaborative robot. These robots work side-by-side
with human workers. They differ from other robots because their function is not intended to do work in
place of human employees. Often they are compact and perform a variety of tasks in the metal industry,
automotive, electronics, laboratories, and hospitals.
Cybernetics: It is a field of systems theory that studies circular causal systems whose outputs
are also inputs, such as feedback systems. It is concerned with the general principles of circular
causal processes, including in ecological, technological, biological, cognitive and social systems and
also in the context of practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing.
Father of Robotics: Joseph F. Engelberger
| Year | Description | Robot Name | Inventor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Third century B.C. and earlier | One of the earliest descriptions of automata appears in the Lie Zi text, on a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023–957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter allegedly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork. | Yan Shi (Chinese: 偃师) | |
| First century A.D. and earlier | Descriptions of more than 100 machines and automata, including a fire engine, a wind organ, a coin-operated machine, and a steam-powered engine, in Pneumatica and Automata by Heron of Alexandria | Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium, Heron of Alexandria, and others | |
| 420 B.C. | A wooden, steam-propelled bird, which was able to fly | Flying pigeon | Archytas of Tarentum |
| 1206 | Created early humanoid automata, programmable automaton band Robot band, hand-washing automaton, automated moving peacocks | Al-Jazari | |
| 1495 | Designs for a humanoid robot | Mechanical Knight | Leonardo da Vinci |
| 1560s | Clockwork Prayer that had machinal feet built under its robes that imitated walking. The robot's eyes, lips, and head all move in lifelike gestures. | Clockwork Prayer | Gianello della Torre |
| 1738 | Mechanical duck that was able to eat, flap its wings, and excrete | Digesting Duck | Jacques de Vaucanson |
| 1898 | Nikola Tesla demonstrates the first radio-controlled vessel. | Teleautomaton | Nikola Tesla |
| 1903 | Leonardo Torres Quevedo presented the Telekino at the Paris Academy of Science, a remote-control system with different states of operation. He chose to conduct the initial test in a tricycle with an effective range of 20 to 30 meters, being the first example of a radio-controlled unmanned ground vehicle. | Telekino | Leonardo Torres Quevedo |
| 1912 | Leonardo Torres Quevedo builds the first truly autonomous machine capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk and Ajeeb, El Ajedrecista had an integrated automaton built to play chess without human guidance. It only played an endgame with three chess pieces, automatically moving a white king and a rook to checkmate the black king moved by a human opponent. | El Ajedrecista | Leonardo Torres Quevedo |
| 1914 | In his paper Essays on Automatics published in 1914, Leonardo Torres Quevedo proposed a machine that makes "judgments" using sensors that capture information from the outside, parts that manipulate the outside world like arms, power sources such as batteries and air pressure, and most importantly, captured information and past information. It was defined as an organism that can control reactions in response to external information and adapt to changes in the environment to change its behavior. | Essays on Automatics | Leonardo Torres Quevedo |
| 1921 | First fictional automatons called "robots" appear in the play R.U.R. | Rossum's Universal Robots | Karel Čapek |
| 1930s | Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 World's Fairs | Elektro | Westinghouse Electric Corporation |
| 1946 | First general-purpose digital computer | Whirlwind | Multiple people |
| 1948 | Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors | Elsie and Elmer | William Grey Walter |
| 1956 | First commercial robot, from the Unimation company founded by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, based on Devol's patents | Unimate | George Devol |
| 1961 | First installed industrial robot. | Unimate | George Devol |
| 1967 to 1972 | First full-scale humanoid intelligent robot, and first android. Its limb control system allowed it to walk with the lower limbs, and to grip and transport objects with its hands, using tactile sensors. Its vision system allowed it to measure distances and directions to objects using external receptors, artificial eyes, and ears. And its conversation system allowed it to communicate with a person in Japanese, with an artificial mouth. | WABOT-1 | Waseda University |
| 1973 | First industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes | Famulus | KUKA Robot Group |
| 1974 | The world's first microcomputer controlled electric industrial robot, IRB 6 from ASEA, was delivered to a small mechanical engineering company in southern Sweden. The design of this robot had been patented in 1972. | IRB 6 | ABB Robot Group |
| 1975 | Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product | PUMA | Victor Scheinman |
| 1978 | The first object-level robot programming language, RAPT, allowing robots to handle variations in object position, shape, and sensor noise. | Freddy I and II | Patricia Ambler and Robin Popplestone |
| 1983 | First multitasking, the parallel programming language used for robot control. It was the Event Driven Language (EDL) on the IBM/Series/1 process computer, with the implementation of both inter-process communication (WAIT/POST) and mutual exclusion (ENQ/DEQ) mechanisms for robot control. | ADRIEL I | Stevo Bozinovski and Mihail Sestakov |
Definition of robotics: https://www.britannica.com/technology/robotics
Types of robots: https://formant.io/robotics/
Valuation of robotics: https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/robotics-market
Cybernetics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
History of robotics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics
Father of robotics: https://www.automate.org/robotics/engelberger/joseph-engelberger-about#:~:text=Father%20of%20Robotics-,Joseph%20F.,engineer%20and%20inventor%20George%20C.