Historical Background and Design of Robotics

Moravec's Paradox ... Linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker considers this the most significant discovery uncovered by AI researchers. In his book The Language Instinct, he writes: "The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard...

2000s In Science And Technology ... Whilst NASA's original mission timeline of 3 months was incorrectly speculated, the mission was tremendously successful overall in the long term, as the MER Mission continues until this day, lasting nearly 25x the projected length. The Human Genome Project was completed...

Phoenix (spacecraft) ... The multi-agency program was headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The program was a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) and other aerospace companies...

Robotics ... Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, as we continue to research, design, and build new robots that serve various practical purposes, whether domestically, commercially, or militarily... Etymology The word robotics was derived from the word robot, which was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R. U. R... According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word robotics was first used in print by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Liar!", published in May 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction...

Behavior-based Robotics ... Behavior-based robots (BBR) usually show more biological-appearing actions than their computing-intensive counterparts, which are very deliberate in their actions. A BBR often makes mistakes, repeats actions, and appears confused, but can also show the anthropomorphic quality of tenacity...

History Of Robots ... Chinese accounts relate a history of automata back to the 10th century BC when Yan Shi is credited with making an automaton resembling a human in an account from the Lie Zi text. Western and Eastern civilisations have concepts of artificial servants and companions with a long history...

Engineering ... The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET) has defined "engineering" as: The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.. ...

Science And Technology In Iran ... Iran is an example of a country that has made considerable advances through education and training, despite international sanctions in almost all aspects of research during the past 30 years. Iran's university population swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to 2 million in 2006...

History Of Engineering ... The term engineering itself has a much more recent etymology, deriving from the word engineer, which itself dates back to 1325, when an engine’er (literally, one who operates an engine) originally referred to “a constructor of military engines.” In this context, now obsolete, an “engine” referred to a military machine, i. e., a mechanical contraption used in war (for example, a catapult)...

Mobile Robot ... Examples of manual remote robots include Robotics Design's ANATROLLER ARI-100 and ARI-50, Foster-Miller's Talon, iRobot's PackBot, and KumoTek's MK-705 Roosterbot...

Robot Locomotion ... A major goal in this field is in developing capabilities for robots to autonomously decide how, when, and where to move. However, coordinating a large number of robot joints for even simple matters, like negotiating stairs, is difficult...

Hubert Dreyfus's Views On Artificial Intelligence ... By the 1980s, however, many of his perspectives were rediscovered by researchers working in robotics and the new field of connectionism—approaches now called "sub-symbolic" because they eschew early AI research's emphasis on high level symbols...

Transhumanism ... The contemporary meaning of the term transhumanism was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School of New York City in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and world views transitional to "posthumanity" as "transhuman". This hypothesis would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990, and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement...

Artificial Intelligence ... The field was founded on the claim that a central property of humans, intelligence—the sapience of Homo sapiens—can be so precisely described that it can be simulated by a machine. This raises philosophical issues about the nature of the mind and the ethics of creating artificial beings, issues which have been addressed by myth, fiction and philosophy since antiquity...

Emerging Technologies ... Emerging technologies are those technical innovations which represent progressive developments within a field for competitive advantage; converging technologies represent previously distinct fields which are in some way moving towards stronger inter-connection and similar goals. However, the opinion on the degree of impact, status and economic viability of several emerging and converging technologies vary...

History Of Artificial Intelligence ... The seeds of modern AI were planted by classical philosophers who attempted to describe the process of human thinking as the mechanical manipulation of symbols. This work culminated in the invention of the programmable digital computer in the 1940s, a machine based on the abstract essence of mathematical reasoning...

Roboethics ... From this standpoint, it can be seen as natural and necessary that robotics drew on several other disciplines, like Logic, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Psychology, Biology, Physiology, Philosophy, Literature, Natural history, Anthropology, Art, Design... This means that experts shall view robotics as a whole — in spite of the current early stage which recalls a melting pot — so they can achieve the vision of the robotics’ future... Main positions on roboethics Since the First International Symposium on Roboethics (Sanremo, Italy, 2004), three main ethical positions emerged from the robotics community (D...

Why The Future Doesn't Need Us ... Molecular Nanotechnology Mechanosynthesis Molecular assembler Molecular machine Productive nanosystems Nanorobotics K. Eric Drexler Engines of Creation See also Nanotechnology "Why the future doesn't need us" is an article written by Bill Joy (then Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems) in the April 2000 issue of Wired magazine...

International Space Station ... The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars...