2. Concept of Robotics.

Defining robots.

Robotics is, technically, a technology science. It also can be defined as the knowledge that gives you the capacity of making automatic systems which work under some orders. Under this definition, we can put sciences like maths and electronics into Robotics. Most of robots are just something that someone did to automate a repetitive task. Most of common robots are systems which are composed of other automatons. These automatons get information from the outer world by using sensors; then, they process that information and give some orders to the other parts.

The word robot comes from the Czech term "robota", which means "hard work". The one who firstly used that term to mean automatic machines was Karel Čapek, a Czech writer. It does not only mean physical robots but also virtual robots. An example of virtual robots are the chess players, which under some rules decide whether or not is the best movement. Robots are not only the anthropomorphic machines that we can see at films; under the definition of robot previously said, robots can be rain-meters or thermometer, because they do something when something happens in the real world. That's why some writers say that a robot should be able choose between many options to be considered as a real robot. The most important writer related to robotics is Isaac Asimov. He is the one who designed the Sci-Fi rules of robotics:

1.-A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2.- A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3.-A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Obviously, these laws are just conceptual, as usual at Sci-Fi. But the meaning pretty related with the AI. However, this ones only show what do these robots want to do.

Artificial intelligent concept (AI).

As you can read at the upper part, anthropomorphic machines are robots, obviously they are. But robots do not have to be anthropomorphic machines. In fact, the main use of robot is related with industry, where appearance does not have any importance. Industrial robots purpose is not really hard to understand. They can be faster than humans, and they have got more precision. And they even waste a smaller quantity of energy. After this, why robots are not used in every kind of industry? Would people accept that? In many parts of our planet, human work is cheaper than the work of robots. Many Sci-Fi writers have believed for many time that in the future, clever robots will have their own workers association and they will be legit parts of the population. And they also believe that humans will protest about that, without any success. Writers have even believed that robots will invade and conquer us. This idea comes from the fact that AI can make them smarter than us, and that was actually the only thing which puts them in a lower level of the survival scape. If they were smarter than us, wouldn't they be able to win us in a war? Many other writers think that this is a paradox. After all, how could robots become smarter than its own designer? Let's make a fast and deep summarize about AI.

As we can imagine, AI is the intelligence made by humans, the one which robots utilize. These ones come from the computer science and can be defined as "The study and design of intelligent agents". These agents my vary; for example, if we have got a robot which looks for a line and follows it, we can say that we have got an intelligent agent. Today, many people and many organisations are researching AI, probably because it i's an idea which could change people lives -and boss economy-. AI started as a way to reason with maths. Many philosophers have been thinking about it, but only one person could make real advances. He was Alan Turing, and created the actual way of thinking of computers based in 0 and 1, mostly called binary. Using binary and Boole's algebra, we can create conditional sentences for robots. Let's see an example of an intelligent behaviour based in C language:

(numberOfEnemies<=20)?(runLikeUsainBolt()):(killThemAll())

Here we have used a simple conditional, but we can also create OR and AND logical sentences.

Or:

((numberOfEnemies<=20)||(sizeOfEnemies<=300))?(runLikeUsainBolt()):(killThemAll())

AND:

((numberOfEnemies<=20)&&(sizeOfEnemies<=300))?(runLikeUsainBolt()):(killThemAll())

In the first sentence, we can see that if one thing is real, another thing happens. In the 2nd one, if one of the things in the sentence is real, even if both are real, something will happen. In the 3rd sentence, only if everything is true, the consequence will happen. Boolean algebra can give machines the capability of reasoning in a simple way. Some scientists believed in the past that humans use that way of reasoning. Well, that is not true. Humans mind does not calculate everything every time. It uses to choose things by past experience. For example, our creativity mixes past experiences, so if a human mind wants to know what will happen after an event, it remembers what happened before and doesn't calculate what will happen. As a consequence, researchers are trying to know how does human mind really works to create an artificial brain.

And we cannot finish talking about the robotics concept without talking about the actual concept of computation related to robots, the way they work. Let's create a virtual system where we have a 20*20*20m cube. Into the cube there's a piece of wood, a circle. Under the circle we've got two motors which are connected to a protoboard which is on the circle. Two photo-sensors are in the front of the circle, and these ones are connected with the protoboard. The control circuit sends an electric signal to the photo-sensors. These ones let energy pass if they receive light, and if there's a object in front of the sensor, the photo-sensors receive light. The control circuit were programmed previously, and the programmer set the control circuit to make the right motor move if it receives signal from the photo-sensor. If the right photo-sensor sends the signal, the left motor has to move. It looks really simple, but is it really simple? No, it isn't. We'll talk later about the mechanical parts that a robot is made of. We are going to get concentrated on the control circuit. The control circuit is usually a micro-controller and some other electronic parts that may vary if the robot does one or another function. This micro controllers are integrated circuits. They concentrate many components and conductors, and they're silicon made. Their way of working is quite complicated, we are going concentrate in the computation side of micro-controllers. When they receive an electrical signal, they do whatever they're programmed for. They've got many pins, and every pin as a specific function. They're programmed in a low level programming language, the assembler. When a programmer puts some code into the micro-controller, the assembler is translated into binary code, a code that a micro-controller can understand. This micro-controller works in a digital way: the micro-controller can understand 1 and 0. Many micro-controller cards, like “Arduino”, can make analogical signals by dividing the main signal into time, so there's no need to modulate. It can understand, in a digital way, signals from 0 to 1. It also can understand, in an analogical way, signals from 0 to 1023, so it can understand what in binary would be 1111111.

Unemployment and robots.

Many writers think that, in the future, robots will get people's job and no one will be able to get money because robots are cheaper. No, that is not really true. Robots are, obviously, a way to get more money because they are more efficient, but robots do not repair themselves. They do not design themselves and, by the moment, they cannot have "creative" reasoning. The develop of robots needs people to improve them, to design them, to test them, to repair them... Another main reason is that the people who is at industries right now are also buyers. Let's propose an example to show this basic principle of economy. A man B assemblies two shoes per hour and buyers C, D and E buy 1 shoe per hour. 3 shoes per hour are bought and only 2 are made. What would happen? Probably, shoes' cost will increase but then no one would want to buy them. That definitely doesn't good for B. So he decides to employ D. D has no experience making shoes and he makes 1 shoe per hour. Now the production is 3 shoes/h and the demand 3 shoes/h.