Might be off topic a bit, but consider the carburetor, vs electronic fuel injection. The carburetor is a relatively simple mechanical device that uses some pretty basic principles to meter fuel quite accurately under many different operating conditions. EFI uses a computer, several sensors, several actuators, a sort of complicated program, and calibrated lookup tables to do the same job.
I doubt either is really a robot, but the analog mechanical device is my favorite if I’m the one paying for and maintaining the thing.
Or consider a gas turbine engine fuel control. Up until about the early-70s, these were analog hydromechanical computers. They consisted of 3D sliding cams, spinning flyweights, EDM-contoured valves, servo valves, check valves, pistons, levers, pressurized metal bellows, helium-filled coils, etc etc.
According to the Robot Institute of America (1979) a robot is:
“A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks”.
With this debate, we will see what the community thinks when the BSA Robotics Merit Badge is published April 2011.
Every time the operate moves the joystick, presses a button, or something else he is sending a signal (which acts the external stimuli) to the robot telling it to execute a piece of preprogrammed code in response.
In even more abstract sense you could think of the driver station as a big sensor array. The driver is creating the external stimuli that in turn makes the robot execute a preprogrammed response.
I think the various messages in this thread have unequivocally established that the answer to this question is: “Of course they aren’t robots; they are obviously and unambiguously robots.”
Parts of some of them are, certainly. Cruise control, the fuel metering system on just about any modern car, paddle-shifting transmissions, the entire hybrid powertrain on a Prius, etc. An airplane under the control of an autopilot is an autonomous robot using just about any definition that doesn’t require robots to have hands.
I don’t think such a distinction would be important when deciding whether or not a machine counts as a robot. There are many examples of open-loop robotic “pick and place” machines in assembly lines, for example. But there’s definitely room for debate on the topic, and one could make a valid comparison between totally open-loop systems and clockwork wind-up mechanisms.
Are the controls (joysticks) considered to be sensors, or simply inputs?
I would consider that a matter of semantics rather than of essence. The system analysis could be done with either choice of label.
Is there a distinction between sensors and inputs?
I probably wouldn’t use the word “sensor” to describe an input device such as a keypad. Sensors typically measure or detect a quality of the environment, while inputs can be pure information without a definite physical analog.
I’d classify inputs as being more general and sensors as a specific type of input, though I’ll decline to define it here. One might also distinguish inputs which require human interaction as “manual inputs”.
But just to add to the confusion, within each manual input probably lies some kind of sensor and/or transducer - within keypads there are gizmos which close circuits when enough force is exerted (switches) and within joysticks there are thingamabobs which sense position and output voltage (potentiometers).
When an operator is operating a robot is the operator using the robot or is the robot using the operator?
Are we not just part of the robotic system… our eyes, brains and hands doing the same functions as other sensors that the robotic system uses to perform a particular function…
BE the robot…!! Resistance is futile…
Is the task what makes the robot? In fulfilling the task we are just helping the robot make the decisions it must to function…
Our input comes from our very own sensors… which are programmed in our brain… we use those sensors to send stimuli to the robot which allows it to take those signals and translate them into movement… and task fulfillment…
I’ve always wanted to make a little demo robot which is a simple arm holding a joystick. When the joystick is pushed left, the arm is powered right, and vice versa. Completely off topic, but it would certainly be cool to see.
We had a robot in ‘04 that, while holding it’s own controls, rose up out of a floor on a lift, turned and found the drive team, then drove to the humans to deliver its’ controls.
This was for an SBPLI fundraiser dinner while the diners watched with Also Sprach Zarathustra playing.
… then it nearly ran over a small table someone had placed in the way holding the boombox playing the 2001 Space Odyssey theme…
My first reaction is “No, but why does it matter so much?”
I can say that regardless of whether or not it’s a robot is utterly irrelevant to FIRST participants. The definition of a word doesn’t subtract from the invaluable experience the community derives from FIRST.
