Scientists at Tokyo University in collaboration with Toyota Corporation have developed a regular household robot “Home Assistant Robot” (HAR). In contrast to the “recreational” development, to show the possibilities of modern cybernetics, the robot could be useful in everyday life. He can do simple work at home, for example, wipe the floor, washing, cleaning dishes and even move the furniture. HAR robot moves on two chassis (plus extra wheels for stability), it is equipped with 5 cameras and laser sensors, this 6 Handed robot is equipped with 3 joints (as a human hand) and have an impressive freedom of movement, HAR has a total of 3 fingers on each hand. According to the press release, this artificial intelligent robot is capable of learning, including its own mistakes. By one time charging the Home Assistant Robot can operate from 30 to 60 minutes, it can be purchased in 1st quarter of 2009 at a cost of about $ 10,000.

Since electronic money becoming more popular in the Japan, various reading devices like FeliCa RFID, supporting different types of e-currency, appearing in stores and in vending machines are built. The company introduced the NEC payment terminal FeliCa, in the form of robot’s real size. This robot was presented at a recent exhibition iEXPO in Tokyo. Mass production and application of the robot can begin very soon, because the technology already is fully elaborated. The company NEC expects its robot will be installed at amusement parks. It will sell tickets for entry to visitors who will have phones with the function to pay the robot, the user needs to select the correct icon of electronic money on the touch screen installed on the robot’s chest, and then hold the phone over a reader device embedded in the left arm of robot.

The robot can be programmed to transfer electronic coupons and other data on the user’s phone after the payment occurs. Among other possibilities the robot can use the camera for the purpose of recognizing and identifying visitors to the park. In this case, the robot will be able to recommend certain types of attractions, starting from the age and visitor statistics. It is not clear whether any amusement park is going to hire a new robot. If not, the NEC can simply install robot Fingerprint bots on the border for immigration controls and to collect biometric data of foreigners in Japan.

Two-legged robot Robovie-X PRO is much faster than its predecessor and has high-torque momentary servomotor and a gyroscopic sensor as the accelerometer. This robot has many methods which can surprise, for example, the one that is referred in the video. The robot will be sold by the company early next year at a cost of USD $3300.

The world of engineering and technology can lead to any level. As proof of this, developers, scientists from the University of Vaseba in Tokyo, Japan, created a robot that can bring you breakfast in bed. His hands are so sensitive that when dealing with bread robot crumbles it. The Robot named “Twendy One”, and he has the size of the average person. The robot will appear in 2015, and perhaps he will be able to perform tasks that today people have to make.

Student Reynolds, who lost his arm in a terrible car accident, told a Scottish technology company allowed him to once again begin to make hundreds of everyday things that once he perceived self-evident. Artificial arm i-Limb has built engines that provide more accurate and higher sensitivity compared to other prosthetic devices. This arm is mounted to the amputees and a rechargeable battery and sensors that track currents in the muscles, which once operated by hand. The development of this hands lasted 20 years - but in the end, it has 5 separate working fingers. Artificial arm i-Limb worth $ 18,000 is developed by the Scottish company Touch Bionics. Reynolds became the second British, who has an opportunity to test it. Unlike previous artificial limbs, i-Limb can control the force of jam, which gives a greater degree of control to the user.

In the next step they moved already fabricated central plane array and associated electronics from a silicon wafer to the tensioned membrane that is stretched taut over a drum.
When this tension is free, the membrane attains its formal form. This procedure presses the focal plane arrangement.

As a result of this electrical interconnects, which are especially designed, delaminate from the rubber surface and make arcs, fastened on the ends by detector pixels.

By deforming the shape in this way provide housing for strains created during the planar to hemispherical transformation. This is achieved without stressing the silicon. This theory was practically proven by researchers at Northwestern during mechanics modeling.

The array package is then transfer printed to a matching hemispherical glass substrate. Attaching a lens and connecting the camera to external electronics completes the assembly. The camera has the size and shape of a human eye.

The research is going on since the last 20 years. Many scientists have worked to develop electronic eye systems of this type but none of them succeeded in making a working camera.
Roger said that through optics simulations and imaging examination we came to know that these arrangements a much broader field of view.

Not only this but also enhances illumination uniformity and causes fewer aberrations as compared to flat cameras which are having same type of imaging lenses. Roger is the scientist doing research at the Beckman Institute and at the university’s Frederick Setiz Materials Research Laboratory.

He said that hemispherical sensor arrangements are suitable to use as retinal implants as compared to flat sensing elements. It has the ability to cover superior quality silicon devices onto surfaces complicated in structure and biological tissues. This ability the design of electronic and optoelectronic device gets very interesting and powerful capabilities.

Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University developed electronic-eye camera.
The 7th august publish of Nature – a journal – described that scientists have succeeded in preparing a superior, hemispherical “eye” camera. This camera is employing a number of single-crystalline silicon sensors and electronics. Those components are set up in a stretchable and interlinked mesh. These scientists were doing research work at University of Illinois and Northwestern University.
This study work unfolds a new future prospect for progressed camera structures. It also indicates signs for artificial retinas for artificial eyes. Such type of eye-concepts has been used in many popular science fiction movies like “Terminator”.
By enwrapping surfaces with stretchy sheets of optoelectronics we get a practical way for incorporating two-dimensional device technologies onto composite curvilinear objects. It is said by John Rogers who is the Flory-Founder Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Illinois.
He also said that this idea made it possible to set electronics in positions where it was difficult to place previously. He said that at present we are able to enhance device design beyond the flatland simplicities of formal wafer-based systems.

The design of this newly developed camera is derived from human eye. This design consists of simple, single-constituent lens and a hemispherical sensing element. The sensing element is incorporated with a hemispherical cap and imaging lens system by the camera. This arrangement brings in a system which is having the same size, shape and layout as human eye has.
The scientists doing research work on that created this camera by molding a thin rubber membrane in the form of a hemisphere. After this they elongated that membrane with especially designed mechanical stage to give it a shape of flat drumhead.

The working schedules are extremely heavy in space as they remain in touch with the earth centers with the video connections and astronauts have a little time to enjoy their private time. The situation is very tense in space strong mental health is needed there.

In a near future, doctors would be able to look into an astronaut space life through portable brain scanner. This could be highly helpful in examining the mental health of the astronauts. This device would provide information and help in monitoring the astronauts for signs of any kind of brain injury or depression or mental tiredness.

In these conditions the astronauts would loose their ability to make critical repair work of space equipment.This scanner is not finally released. The research work is going on at Massachusetts General Hospital in US state of Boston. This will be finally evaluated for its performance and safety perspectives. After then it will be handed over to NASA which will think to send it into orbit.

In space there would be more robots and fewer astronauts in the coming time. This is the idea given by three European aerospace engineers who believe that the crewed satellites sent to repair missions are much expensive and wasteful as we saw recently astronauts flown by NASA to repair the Hubble Space Telescope which cost much high.

These three scientists are Alex Ellery, Joerg Kreidsel and Bernd Sommer. The statement was given in the journal Acta Astronautica in which they said that though such types of missions are spectacular but quite unsustainable.

Space agencies and satellite operators should seriously move faster making effort to make robotic mechanics. These mechanics would be able to provide robotic mechanics complying with different Earth orbits which would help in fixing errant satellites when required.

The practical demonstration of in-orbit repair by a robot has already been performed last summer. The work was carried out by pentagon. They coaxed a robot – Astro into dockling having no external control with NextSat; NextSat is a prototype serviceable craft. They replaced a dead battery through it.

However the researchers are not satisfied by the speed of scientific research progress, they feel it much slow despite of its importance and need.

Satellites are not much reliable, as you see problem with navigation and thruster failures often. It is a big loss and cost very much when thruster fails; on the other side insurance is also expensive.

These factors provide the industry a big reason to go in search of cheaper and safer alternative ways to human mechanics. The three engineers said;

“Scepticism of robotic in-orbit servicing is wasting the space sector vast amounts of money,”

They further said;

“There are few industries which would willingly spend $100 million on highly designed, long-lived hardware without the provision for repair and upgrade.”

DARPA is going to sign a contract to engineer an unmanned aircraft that would be able to remain in the air for continuous five years; that was a statement given by the officials of Flight Global. The representatives from DARPA gave it the name of “Vulture”. They characterized their creation by saying that it would be having pseudo-satellite features. The aircraft would be able fly over a specific area with full capabilities of communicating and performing analysis for continuous five years in a single flight.

There would be some barriers in the way of achieving this goal. One of them is to design the mechanism of supplying power to this aircraft during its continuous flight mission. One important thing to mention here is that this aircraft will carry a 1000 pound (450 kg) payload in fierce winds at the height of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.

The design of the aircraft would probably be as it shown in the picture; this design is developed by NASA. The work on project began but no specific time period is given by the authorities for the completion of the project.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hopes to totally change the concept of unmanned aviation and bring this aviation technology up to new levels. This new project of UAV -Unmanned Aircraft Vulture - is the part of their efforts in this regard.

“We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft”.

This was said by Daniel Newman, who is designated as the project manager of this new Vulture project.

He also said,

“Aviation has a perfect record; we have never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record”.

This new creation would change the whole systematic arrangement of aircraft with its characteristics. Daniel Newman describes this thing in these words.

“The ability to “close the business case” on an aircraft that could be launched and then not maintained or brought home for five years would be a paradigm shift. We would no longer define an aircraft by the launch - recover - maintain - launch cycle,”

Besides the power supply problem scientists are also facing two more major problems in this project. One is aero-structural efficiency which should be maximized. Secondly since the aircraft would stay in air for a long time; it would definitely face the material deterioration problem during its long-period stratospheric flight. Engineers are working to solve both of these problems and doing continuous research work.

The aircraft works much like a satellite and not having orbital mechanics to operate it.

DARPA’s Wade Pulliam said,

“It could be positioned over the battle, at 65,000ft versus 260 miles”

He said that as the aircraft would have a look of satellite and would have stratospheric flight; this would upgrade communication capability with 65dB and also increase onboard sensor resolution to good enough extent.

In the past two to three decades technology has advanced and continues to advance in a rapid way; this momentum doesn’t seem to slow down and continuously speeding up. We are now entering into the world of possibilities from the world of imagination.

Walking robots is a difficult study.Robots can walk on two legs,Recent robots can not move on a surface that is not smooth.

The methods that have been applied to this study are:

Zero Moment Point Technique (ZMP Technique)

This algorithm is used in Asimo which is a honda product. The computer of the robot tried to keep the total gravity acceleration and deceleration forces of walking (called inertial forces), these inertial forces are opposed by the force of the floor(reaction force), the floor force pushed back on the foot of the robot.

Hoping

Many robots that are build during 1980’s(by Marc Raibert) at MIT Leg Laboratory, used daynamic walking. A robot that have one leg and a foot can stay in a up-right position by using the hopping technique (like a person on a stay on a stick). This algorithm is then enhanced to be used by two and four legs. You can see the full set of these robots at the MIT Leg robotics page.

Dynamic Balancing

This technique is more effective than the ZMP movement technique, because it can constantly keep track the motion of the robot,place and move the feet of the robot with stability. This algorithm is used by by the Dexter Robot (by Anybot), which is very stable in movement but it can also jump.

Passive Dynamics

This approach defined the use of the momentum of the limbs or the swinging for effective and greater efficieny.This techique approves that a robot can walk down a gentle slope, It proves that a robot can move on a gentle slope, using no power, but using only the force of ther gravity. By using this mechanism a robot only needs a very small amount of the power (motor power generation) to walk on a smooth surface an a little power to walk or climb on a hill. This technique makes robots more(ten times) efficient than the ZMP walker techiques like used in asimo.

Robots Manipulation
The Robots require moving its body parts to affect the objects, such as they can lift objects, change objects, and destroy objects. Here I will define the hands and arms of a robot. The hands are called effectors and the arms are called manipulators.
Robots use different kinds of strength grippers. Vacuum type, Simple type and Effectors.

Vacuum Grippers
These kinds of grippers can hold very large amount of loads.
Simple Grippers
This kind of gripper is used to hold small objects and have less force than vacuum grippers.
e.g. The grip of two fingers.

Effectors
In some advanced type of robots the human kinds of hands are used. E.g. the shadow hand which is developed by a company in London, this is very advanced kind of hand, currently NASA is using it. It has many tactile sensors for the movement of hand parts.

Act of Movement or Locomotion
Robots movement can be rotational or they can walk like humans.

Rotational Movement Robots or Rolling Robots
Robots rotational movement can be implemented by wheels (two or four wheels).The devices that have two wheels can not be considered robots but can be thought of as components of robots. These devices use some kind of balancing algorithms.
Some of the researchers in the “Carnegie Mellon University” developed a mobile robot that can balance itself on a single urethane coated metal sphere; it is about 65 pounds in weight. The named it “Ballot”.
The robot used by NASA, it has tank like structure and have tracks is called Urban Robot also named Urbie.

Robotics is the technology and sciences of robots; it is all about their design, manufacture, and application. Robotics requires knowledge of software, mechanics and electronics. A person working in this,is a roboticist.

The robotics are mechanical, from structural point of view (kinematic chain: Like human body structure). The chain (bones) is composed of links, its muscles called actuators it’s its joints allow it to move in more than one degree of freedom.
Most of the robots uses serial chain structure (connected to the one after another), these kinds of robots that uses serial chain structure called (due to their structure)the serial robots that actually resemble with the human arm. The capabilities and appearance of many robots are different in differen sense. E.g. Stewart platform uses parallel kinematic chains mechanism.

Structures like animals,insects are rarley used. The development of these kind of structures is an area of research called biomechanics.

Components of Robots
The actuators are called the muscles of a robot; these are the parts of a robot which actually converts the stored energy into movement. These actuators are actually motors and can use electrical power, compressed air or use chemicals.

Air Muscles
It is a power full device for providing pulling force to robots, used in muscles of robots to be it shorten,faty thin and long.

Motors
Majority of robots uses electrical motors (DC Motors), these can spin forward and backward depends on how electric current passed to them.

Stepper Motor:
These kinds of motors spin in steps under the command and control of the controller; these motors do not spin smothly and freely as DC motors.

Piezo Motors
These motors are called ultrasonic motors, these widely used in legs for vibrating thousands of times per second. These motors are high in speed, power and resolution.

Electroactive Polymers
This is a kind of plastic which can change its shape in response to the electric current provided to it. It can bend, stretch and contract. It is used in many robots, but still under development to made it better and powerful ones.

Elastic
Such kind of nanotube technology is still under development, it will allow the upcomming robots to run faster and jump.