Robotics Overview
Robotics is an interdisciplinary field at the crossroads of engineering and computer science involving the design and operation of robots. A robot is a machine that is capable of performing complex tasks either automatically or assisted by humans.
Robots have long been in the imagination of Sci-Fi and fiction with R2-D2, WALL-E, and Rosie of The Jetsons. The origin of the word "robot" stems from a 1920 Czech science-fiction play, Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots). This play was a critique of industrialization and its dehumanization of people. "Roboti" was derived from the word "robota" meaning "forced labor." (Jordan, 2019)
In modern times, humans have used robots to explore other planets and the deepest parts of the ocean. They are used in factories for complex assembly lines and the home for vacuuming and mopping tasks. Specialized robots are used for a variety of surgical tasks and others have been developed as toys. While not every home has a Rosie to tidy up those sci-fi visions for the future have been influential in the robots that are created today.
Resources
- ACM Digital LibraryFull text of all articles from 1991 to date published in 21 ACM journals and transactions, as well as tables of contents of conference proceedings, are available at this site. A search engine allows the user to find relevant information from all sources.
- IEEE XploreProvides full-text access to IEEE transactions, IEEE and IEE journals, magazines, and conference proceedings published since 1988, all current IEEE standards, and all IEEE-Wiley eBooks titles copyrighted in the year(s) 1974-2015.
- Intelligent Technologies & Robotics eBook CollectionThis collection covers applications such as Intelligent Transportation, Humanoids, Self-Driving Cars, IoT, Ambient Intelligence, Smart Cities, Human-computer Interaction, Computational Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Medical Robotics, and Data Science.
- SPIE Digital LibraryUSERS MUST LOGIN ON CAMPUS; Contains more than 70,000 full-text papers on optics and photonics from SPIE journals and proceedings published since 1998. It also includes citations and abstracts for most SPIE papers published since 1990. Plans are underway to expand the DL back to 1990 by the end of 2004, an archive of nearly 200,000 papers covering a wide scope of optical technologies and applications. Approximately 15,000 new papers will be added each year.
Online Robotics Courses
- Robotics SpecializationFrom the University of Pennsylvania. The Introduction to Robotics Specialization introduces you to the concepts of robot flight and movement, how robots perceive their environment, and how they adjust their movements to avoid obstacles, navigate difficult terrains and accomplish complex tasks such as construction and disaster recovery. You will be exposed to real world examples of how robots have been applied in disaster situations, how they have made advances in human health care and what their future capabilities will be. The courses build towards a capstone in which you will learn how to program a robot to perform a variety of movements such as flying and grasping objects.
- Introducing Robotics: Robotics and SocietyFrom Queensland University of Technology. This course is for anyone interested in discovering how our society currently uses robots and how we might use them to solve big challenges in the future. You don’t need any robotics knowledge or experience to join in this course.
- Robotic Vision: Principles of VisionFrom Queensland University of Technology. Learn the basics of human and robot vision, the concept of perspective and the constituent parts of an image.
References
- Jordan, J.M. (2019, July 29). The Czech Play That Gave Us the Word ‘Robot’. The MIT Press Reader. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/origin-word-robot-rur/