Autonomous Robots- Industrial andDomestic

Autonomous robots (Picture courtesy of KUKA Robotics) and vehicles are machines that are capable of interacting with the enviroment through use of sensors and programming. In effect they are "Intelligent" in the way they need little human contact, to carry put they're desired tasks.

The different sensors can sense many different things, some ,like humans, sense heat, light,sound, touch but as sensors are so varied , robots can sense atititude , latitude and longitude, UV, Infra red and react accordingly with what they find. Some intelligent robots , using cameras can sense depth of vision and objects that may come in its path. In industry Autonomous robots can be used in factories for producing goods, the classical use for industrial robots was to just work on a cordinate system, e.g. Place screw A at 10cm Screw B at 5 cm, but new developments mean that robots can sense the object they are working on. This can allow for less errors and smarter robotics that can adapt if the object it it working on is not entirely perfect, or it can handle different objects at different times without having to be reprogrammed completely. This ultimately reduces cost. One example is for using robots to pick up parts from conveyor systems, which can be an expensive task with "unintelligent robots" by use of "2-D vision" cameras can locate different parts and are able to control an arm to pick up said parts.

As ever ,after industry , domestic autonomous robots have come into use. Irobot has been developed to deal with domestic vacuuming. Its sensors detect when objects are in its way, what floor conditions it is travelling onto, and it can even detect its base station , so can recharge itself when its batteries are low. The way in which it can negotiate obstacles is interesting, in this case it is randomness , the cleaner robot will try many different approaches until it finds one which can work "randomness", whilst some more expensive military robots can create a map of the future surroundings by use of its sensors , building up a picture through which it can navigate easily through. The Vacuum cleaning robot can even find its base station to automatically charge from, with the base station emitting an infra red signal with which the robot can follow, which is a way of "foraging" just like humans do for resources. (Video courtesy of Irobot corporation)