ROBOTICS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Seminar Report

submitted

in partial fulfillment

for the award of the Degree of

Bachelor of Technology

in Department of Information Technology

Session-2020-21

Supervisor Submitted By
Ms. Sushila Vishnoi Anushka Mukherjee
Associate Professor, 17ESKIT006
Department of Information Technology
Department of Information Technology,
Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management & Gramothan,
Jaipur, 302017

0
1
 SWAMI KESHVANAND INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
MANAGEMENT & GRAMOTHAN, JAIPUR

Candidate’s Declaration

I hereby declare that the work, which is being presented in the Seminar Report, entitled
“Seminar on Robotics in Artificial Intelligence” in partial fulfilment for the award of Degree
of “Bachelor of Technology” in Department of Computer Science & Engineering with
Specialization in Computer Engineering, and submitted to the Department of Computer
Science & Engineering, Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management &
Gramothan, Jaipur, Rajasthan Technical University is a record of my own investigations
carried under the Guidance of Mrs. Sushila Vishnoi, Department of Computer Science &
Engineering, Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management & Gramothan, Jaipur.

Anushka Mukherjee

B.Tech. (Information Technology)

Roll No: 17ESKIT006
Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management & Gramothan, Jaipur

Counter Signed by
Name of Supervisor

..................................
Mrs. Sushila Vishnoi
Associate Professor, Department of Information Technology
Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management & Gramothan, Jaipur
 CERTIFICATE

Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology , Management &

Gramothan, Jaipur

Department of Information Technology

This is to certify that Anushka Mukherjee 17ESKIT006 of VII Semester Btech

(Information Technology) 2020-21 has presented a Seminar titled “Robotics In
Artificial Intelligence” in partial fulfilment for the award of the Degree of
Batchelor of Technology under Rajasthan Technical University, Kota.

Date: 6th December 2020-21

Supervisor: Mrs. Sushila Vishnoi

 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I feel immense pleasure in expressing my regards to the Chairman Mr. Surja Ram Meel,

Director Mr. Jaipal Meel, Registrar Mrs. Rachana Meel, Director (Academics) Prof. (Dr.) S.
L. Surana, Director (D&W) Prof. (Dr.) S. K. Calla & Principal Prof. (Dr.) Ramesh Prachar
Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management & Gramothan, Jaipur for providing
me necessary facilities during the various stages of this work.

I would like to thank Dr. Anil Chaudhary, Professor & Head, Department of Information
Technology for provide me opportunity to work in consistent direction and providing their
valuable suggestions to improve Seminar Report.

I would like to thank my esteemed guide Reader Mrs. Sushila Vishnoi, Associate
Professor Department of Information Technology, Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology,
Management & Gramothan, Jaipur for her valuable guidance, keen interest, constant
encouragement, incessant inspiration and continuous help throughout this work. Specially I
acknowledge her support when I was stuck and she is suggesting me new ideas to solve the
problems. Her vast experience and realistic approach have been of great help to me. I am
honored having Mrs. Sushila Vishnoi as my seminar report supervisor. Her excellent guidance
has been instrumental in making this work a success.

I would also like to express my thanks to my parents for their support and blessings. In
addition, a very special thanks to all my colleagues and friends for their support in the
completion of this work.

Anushka Mukherjee
B. Tech. (Information Technology)
Roll No: 17ESKIT006
 CONTENTS

Candidate’s Declaration i
Certificate ii
Acknowledgment iii
Contents iv-v
Abbreviations and Acronyms vi
List of Figures vii
Abstract 1

1. INTRODUCTION 10-11
1.1 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence 10-11
1.2 Challenges in Artificial Intelligence 11
1.2.1 Reasoning problem solving
1.2.2 Knowledge Representation
1.2.3 Planning
1.2.4 Learning
1.2.5 Natural Language Processing
1.2.6 Perception
1.2.7 Motion and manipulation
1.2.8 Social Intelligence
1.2.9 General Intelligence

2. Artificial Intelligence Application 12-16

2.1 Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

2.2 Artificial Intelligence in Banking
2.3 Artificial Intelligence in Finance
2.4 Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture
2.5 Artificial Intelligence in Health Care
2.6 Artificial Intelligence in Gaming
2.7 Artificial Intelligence in Space Exploration
2.8 Artificial Intelligence in Autonomous Vehicle
2.9 Artificial Intelligence in Chatbot
2.10 Artificial Intelligence in Artificial Creativity

3. Robotics in Artificial Intelligence 17

3.1 Emergency Assistance Robots
3.2 Home Robots
 3.3 Gaming Robots
3.4 Knowledge Sharing Robots
3.5 “World’s First“ Robots

4. Major Fields of Robotics 22

4.1 Human Robot Interface
4.2 Mobility
4.3 Manipulation
4.4 Manipulation
4.5 Sensor

5. Robotics in Space Exploration 28

6. References
 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

AI Artificial Intelligence
DAS Direct Attached Storage
NAS Network Attached Storage
NFS Network File System
FC Fiber Channel
MIN Minimum
MAX Maximum
 LIST OF FIGURES

S. No. Fig No. Description Page No.

1. Fig 2.1 Artificial Intelligence 13
2. Fig 2.2 Challenges in AI 15
3. Fig 4.1 AI Applications 20
4. Fig 4.2 AI Research Fields 21
5. Fig 4.3 Vyommitra 25
 CHAPTER 1

1. INTRODUCTION TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are
programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. The term may also be applied to any machine
that exhibits traits associated with a human mind such as learning and problem-solving.
The ideal characteristic of artificial intelligence is its ability to rationalize and take actions that have the
best chance of achieving a specific goal.
When most people hear the term artificial intelligence, the first thing they usually think of is robots. That
is because big-budget films and novels weave stories about human-like machines that wreak havoc on
Earth. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Artificial intelligence is based on the principle that human intelligence can be defined in a way that a
machine can easily mimic it and execute tasks, from the simplest to those that are even more complex.
The goals of artificial intelligence include learning, reasoning, and perception.

As technology advances, previous benchmarks that defined artificial intelligence become outdated. For
example, machines that calculate basic functions or recognize text through optimal character recognition
are no longer considered to embody artificial intelligence, since this function is now taken for granted as
an inherent computer function. AI is continuously evolving to benefit many different industries.
Machines are wired using a cross-disciplinary approach based in mathematics, computer science,
linguistics, psychology, and more. Algorithms often play an especially important part in the structure of
artificial intelligence, where simple algorithms are used in simple applications, while more complex
ones help frame strong artificial intelligence.

As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require "intelligence" are often removed
from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the AI effect. A quip in Tesler's Theorem says "AI is
whatever hasn't been done yet." For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from
things considered to be AI, having become a routine technology.Modern machine capabilities generally
classified as AI include successfully understanding human speech,[9] competing at the highest level
in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go), autonomously operating cars, intelligent routing
in content delivery networks, and military simulations.

The traditional problems (or goals) of AI research include reasoning, knowledge

representation, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception and the ability to move and
manipulate objects. General intelligence is among the field's long-term goals. Approaches
include statistical methods, computational intelligence, and traditional symbolic AI. Many tools are used
in AI, including versions of search and mathematical optimization, artificial neural networks,
and methods based on statistics, probability and economics. The AI field draws upon computer
science, information engineering, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and many other
fields.

1.1 Challenges in Artificial Intelligence

The cognitive capabilities of current architectures are extremely limited, using only a simplified version
of what intelligence is really capable of. For instance, the human mind has come up with ways to reason
beyond measure and logical explanations to different occurrences in life. What would have been
otherwise straightforward, an equivalently difficult problem may be challenging to solve
computationally as opposed to using the human mind. This gives rise to two classes of models:
structuralist and functionalist. The structural models aim to loosely mimic the basic intelligence
operations of the mind such as reasoning and logic. The functional model refers to the correlating data to
its computed counterpart.
The overall research goal of artificial intelligence is to create technology that allows computers and
machines to function in an intelligent manner. The general problem of simulating (or creating)
intelligence has been broken down into sub-problems. These consist of particular traits or capabilities
that researchers expect an intelligent system to display. The traits described below have received the
most attention.
 Reasoning, problem solving
Early researchers developed algorithms that imitated step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they
solve puzzles or make logical deductions. By the late 1980s and 1990s, AI research had developed
methods for dealing with uncertain or incomplete information, employing concepts
from probability and economics. These algorithms proved to be insufficient for solving large reasoning
problems because they experienced a "combinatorial explosion": they became exponentially slower as
the problems grew larger.[76] Even humans rarely use the step-by-step deduction that early AI research
could model. They solve most of their problems using fast, intuitive judgments.
 Knowledge representation
An ontology represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between
those concepts.
Knowledge representation[97] and knowledge engineering[98] are central to classical AI research. Some
"expert systems" attempt to gather explicit knowledge possessed by experts in some narrow domain. In
addition, some projects attempt to gather the "common sense knowledge" known to the average person
into a database containing extensive knowledge about the world.
 Planning

A hierarchical control system is a form of control system in which a set of devices and governing
software is arranged in a hierarchy.
Intelligent agents must be able to set goals and achieve them. They need a way to visualize the future—a
representation of the state of the world and be able to make predictions about how their actions will
change it—and be able to make choices that maximize the utility (or "value") of available choices.
In classical planning problems, the agent can assume that it is the only system acting in the world,
allowing the agent to be certain of the consequences of its actions. However, if the agent is not the only
actor, then it requires that the agent can reason under uncertainty. This calls for an agent that can not
only assess its environment and make predictions but also evaluate its predictions and adapt based on its
assessment.
Multi-agent planning uses the cooperation and competition of many agents to achieve a given
goal. Emergent behavior such as this is used by evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence.[120]
 Learning
For this project the AI had to find the typical patterns in the colors and brushstrokes of Renaissance
painter Raphael. The portrait shows the face of the actress Ornella Muti, "painted" by AI in the style of
Raphael.
 Natural language processing

A parse tree represents the syntactic structure of a sentence according to some formal grammar.

Natural language processing[128] (NLP) allows machines to read and understand human language. A
sufficiently powerful natural language processing system would enable natural-language user
interfaces and the acquisition of knowledge directly from human-written sources, such as newswire
texts. Some straightforward applications of natural language processing include information
retrieval, text mining, question answering and machine translation.
 Perception
Feature detection (pictured: edge detection) helps AI compose informative abstract structures out of raw
data. Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras (visible spectrum or
infrared), microphones, wireless signals, and active lidar, sonar, radar, and tactile sensors) to deduce
aspects of the world. Applications include speech recognition, facial recognition, and object
recognition. Computer vision is the ability to analyze visual input. Such input is usually ambiguous; a
giant, fifty-meter-tall pedestrian far away may produce the same pixels as a nearby normal-sized
pedestrian, requiring the AI to judge the relative likelihood and reasonableness of different
interpretations, for example by using its "object model" to assess that fifty-meter pedestrians do not
exist.
 Motion and manipulation
AI is heavily used in robotics. Advanced robotic arms and other industrial robots, widely used in modern
factories, can learn from experience how to move efficiently despite the presence of friction and gear
slippage. A modern mobile robot, when given a small, static, and visible environment, can easily
determine its location and map its environment; however, dynamic environments, such as
(in endoscopy) the interior of a patient's breathing body, pose a greater challenge. Motion planning is the
process of breaking down a movement task into "primitives" such as individual joint movements. Such
movement often involves compliant motion, a process where movement requires maintaining physical
contact with an object
 Social intelligence

Kismet, a robot with rudimentary social skills

Moravec's paradox can be extended to many forms of social intelligence. Distributed multi-agent
coordination of autonomous vehicles remains a difficult problem. Affective computing is an
interdisciplinary umbrella that comprises systems which recognize, interpret, process, or simulate
human affects. Moderate successes related to affective computing include textual sentiment
analysis and, more recently, multimodal affect analysis (see multimodal sentiment analysis), wherein AI
classifies the affects displayed by a videotaped subject.
 General intelligence
Historically, projects such as the Cyc knowledge base (1984–) and the massive Japanese Fifth
Generation Computer Systems initiative (1982–1992) attempted to cover the breadth of human
cognition. These early projects failed to escape the limitations of non-quantitative symbolic logic models
and, in retrospect, greatly underestimated the difficulty of cross-domain AI. Nowadays, most current AI
researchers work instead on tractable "narrow AI" applications (such as medical diagnosis or automobile
navigation).[155] Many researchers predict that such "narrow AI" work in different individual domains
will eventually be incorporated into a machine with artificial general intelligence (AGI), combining
most of the narrow skills mentioned in this article and at some point even exceeding human ability in
most or all these areas.
 CHAPTER 2

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS

2.1 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MARKETING

Marketing is a way to sugar coat your products to attract more customers. We, humans, are fairly
good at sugar coating, but what if an algorithm or a bot is there solely for the purpose of
marketing a brand or a company? It would do an awesome job! In the early 2000s, if we
searched an online store to find a product without knowing it is exact name, it would become a
nightmare to find the product. But now when we search for an item on any e-commerce store, we
get all possible results related to the item. It is like these search engines are reading our minds! In
a matter of seconds, we get a list of all relevant items. An example of this is finding the right
movies on Netflix. One reason why we are all obsessed with Netflix and chill is because, Netflix
provides highly accurate predictive technology based on customer’s reactions to films. It
examines millions of records to suggest shows and films that you might like based on your
previous actions and choices of films. As the data set grows, this technology is getting smarter
and smarter every day.

With the growing advancement in AI, soon, it may be possible for consumers on the web to buy
products by snapping a photo of it. Companies like CamFind and their competitors are
experimenting this already.
2.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN BANKING

AI in banking is growing faster than you thought! A lot of banks have already adopted AI-based
systems to provide customer support, detect anomalies and credit card frauds. An example of this
is HDFC Bank. HDFC Bank has developed an AI-based chatbot called EVA (Electronic Virtual
Assistant), built by Bengaluru-based Senseforth AI Research. Since its launch, Eva has
addressed over 3 million customer queries, interacted with over half a million unique users, and
held over a million conversations. Eva can collect knowledge from thousands of sources and
provide simple answers in less than 0.4 seconds. The use of AI for fraud prevention is not a new
concept. In fact, AI solutions are there to enhance security across a number of business sectors,
including retail and finance. By tracing card usage and endpoint access, security specialists are
more effectively preventing fraud. Organizations rely on AI to trace those steps by analyzing the
behaviors of transactions. Companies such as MasterCard and RBS WorldPay have relied on AI
and Deep Learning to detect fraudulent transaction patterns and prevent card fraud for years
now. This has saved millions of dollars.

Fig: Artificial Intelligence in Banking

2.3 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN FINANCE

Ventures have been relying on computers and data scientists to determine future patterns in the
market. Trading mainly depends on the ability to predict the future accurately. Machines are
great at this because they can crunch a huge amount of data in a short span. Machines can also
learn to observe patterns in past data and predict how these patterns might repeat in the future. In
the age of ultra-high-frequency trading, financial organizations are turning to AI to improve their
stock trading performance and boost profit. One such organization is Japan’s leading brokerage
house, Nomura Securities. The company has been reluctantly pursuing one goal, i.e. to analyze
the insights of experienced stock traders with the help of computers. After years of research,
Nomura is set to introduce a new stock trading system.

The new system stores a vast amount of price and trading data in its computer. By tapping into
this reservoir of information, it will make assessments, for example, it may determine that
current market conditions are similar to the conditions two weeks ago and predict how share
prices will be changing a few minutes down the line. This will help to take better trading
decisions based on the predicted market prices.

2.4 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN AGRICULTURE

Here’s an alarming fact, the world will need to produce 50 percent more food by 2050 because
we’re literally eating up everything! The only way this can be possible is if we use our resources
more carefully. With that being said, AI can help farmers get more from the land while using
resources more sustainably. Issues such as climate change, population growth, and food security
concerns have pushed the industry into seeking more innovative approaches to improve crop
yield. Organizations are using automation and robotics to help farmers find more efficient ways
to protect their crops from weeds.

Blue River Technology has developed a robot called See & Spray which uses computer vision
technologies like object detection to monitor and precisely spray weedicide on cotton plants.
Precision spraying can help prevent herbicide resistance.Apart from this, Berlin-based
agricultural tech start-up called PEAT, has developed an application called Plantix that identifies
potential defects and nutrient deficiencies in the soil through images.

The image recognition app identifies possible defects through images captured by the user’s
smartphone camera. Users are then provided with soil restoration techniques, tips, and other
possible solutions. The company claims that its software can achieve pattern detection with an
estimated accuracy of up to 95%.

2.5 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN HEALTH CARE

When it comes to saving our lives, a lot of organizations and medical care centers are relying on
AI. There are many examples of how AI in healthcare has helped patients all over the world. An
organization called Cambio Health Care developed a clinical decision support system for stroke
prevention that can give the physician a warning when there’s a patient at risk of having a heart
stroke. Another such example is Coala life which is a company that has a digitalized device that
can find cardiac diseases. Similarly, Aifloo is developing a system for keeping track of how
people are doing in nursing homes, home care, etc. The best thing about AI in healthcare is that
you don’t even need to develop a new medication. Just by using an existing medication in the
right way, you can also save lives.
2.6 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN GAMING

Over the past few years, Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of the gaming
industry. In fact, one of the biggest accomplishments of AI is in the gaming industry.
DeepMind’s AI-based AlphaGo software, which is famous for defeating Lee Sedol, the world
champion in the game of GO, is  one of the most significant accomplishment in the field of AI.
Shortly after the victory, DeepMind created an advanced version of AlphaGo called AlphaGo
Zero which defeated the predecessor in an AI-AI face off. Unlike the original AlphaGo, which
DeepMind trained over time by using a large amount of data and supervision, the advanced
system, AlphaGo Zero taught itself to master the game.

Other examples of Artificial Intelligence in gaming include the First Encounter Assault Recon,
popularly known as F.E.A.R, which is a first-person shooter video game.

2.7 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN SPACE EXPLORATION

Space expeditions and discoveries always require analyzing vast amounts of data. Artificial
Intelligence and Machine learning is the best way to handle and process data on this scale. After
rigorous research, astronomers used Artificial Intelligence to sift through years of data obtained
by the Kepler telescope in order to identify a distant eight-planet solar system. Artificial
Intelligence is also being used for NASA’s next rover mission to Mars, the Mars 2020 Rover.
The AEGIS, which is an AI-based Mars rover is already on the red planet. The rover is
responsible for autonomous targeting of cameras in order to perform investigations on Mars.
2.8 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE

For the longest time, self-driving cars have been a buzzword in the AI industry. The
development of autonomous vehicles will definitely revolutionaries the transport system.
Companies like Waymo conducted several test drives in Phoenix before deploying their first AI-
based public ride-hailing service. The AI system collects data from the vehicles radar, cameras,
GPS, and cloud services to produce control signals that operate the vehicle. Advanced Deep
Learning algorithms can accurately predict what objects in the vehicle’s vicinity are likely to do.
This makes Waymo cars more effective and safer. Another famous example of an autonomous
vehicle is Tesla’s self-driving car. Artificial Intelligence implements computer vision, image
detection and deep learning to build cars that can automatically detect objects and drive around
without human intervention.

2.9 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN CHATBOTS

These days Virtual assistants have become a very common technology. Almost every household
has a virtual assistant that controls the appliances at home. A few examples include Siri, Cortana,
which are gaining popularity because of the user experience they provide.

Amazon’s Echo is an example of how Artificial Intelligence can be used to translate human
language into desirable actions. This device uses speech recognition and NLP to perform a wide
range of tasks on your command. It can do more than just play your favorite songs. It can be
used to control the devices at your house, book cabs, make phone calls, order your favorite food,
check the weather conditions and so on.

2.10 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Ever since social media has become our identity, we’ve been generating an immeasurable
amount of data through chats, tweets, posts and so on. And wherever there is an abundance of
data, AI and Machine Learning are always present. In social media platforms like Facebook, AI
is used for face verification wherein machine learning and deep learning concepts are used to
detect facial features and tag your friends. Deep Learning is used to extract every minute detail
from an image by using a bunch of deep neural networks. On the other hand, Machine learning
algorithms are used to design your feed based on your interests.

2.11 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ARTIFICIAL CREATIVITY

Have you ever wondered what would happen if an artificially intelligent machine tried to create
music and art? An AI-based system called MuseNet can now compose classical music that
echoes the classical legends, Bach and Mozart. MuseNet is a deep neural network that is capable
of generating 4-minute musical compositions with 10 different instruments and can combine
styles from country to Mozart to the Beatles. MuseNet was not explicitly programmed with an
understanding of music, but instead discovered patterns of harmony, rhythm, and style by
learning on its own. Another creative product of Artificial Intelligence is a content automation
tool – Wordsmith. Wordsmith is a natural language generation platform that can transform your
data into insightful narratives.
 CHAPTER 3

ROBOTICS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Robotics is an interdisciplinary research area at the interface of computer

science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots.
The goal of robotics is to design intelligent machines that can help and assist humans in their
day-to-day lives and keep everyone safe. Robotics draws on the achievement of information
engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering and others.
Robotics develops machines that can substitute for humans and replicate human actions. Robots
can be used in many situations and for many purposes, but today many are used in dangerous
environments (including inspection of radioactive materials, bomb detection and deactivation),
manufacturing processes, or where humans cannot survive (e.g. in space, underwater, in high
heat, and clean up and containment of hazardous materials and radiation). Robots can take on
any form but some are made to resemble humans in appearance. This is said to help in the
acceptance of a robot in certain replicative behaviors usually performed by people. Such robots
attempt to replicate walking, lifting, speech, cognition, or any other human activity. Many of
today's robots are inspired by nature, contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics.

The concept of creating robots that can operate autonomously dates back to classical times, but
research into the functionality and potential uses of robots did not grow substantially until the
20th century. Throughout history, it has been frequently assumed by various scholars, inventors,
engineers, and technicians that robots will one day be able to mimic human behavior and manage
tasks in a human-like fashion. Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, as technological
advances continue; researching, designing, and building new robots serve various practical
purposes, whether domestically, commercially, or militarily. Many robots are built to do jobs
that are hazardous to people, such as defusing bombs, finding survivors in unstable ruins, and
exploring mines and shipwrecks. Robotics is also used in STEM (science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics) as a teaching aid.

Top five recent areas of robotics research are as follows

3.1 Emergency Assistance Robots
A practical field of research is focused on developing robots for emergency assistance. Robots can be
trained to assist people in disaster recovery, perform rescue missions in hazardous conditions, or simply
go places that humans cannot go.
A well-known example is Mars rover. Rover robots are built to explore extra-terrestrial terrains and
search for signs of habitability. Its purpose is for research and development, but there are other
applications as well. For example, a team of engineers at Carnegie Mellon University recently
dispatched robots to help with rescue missions after an Earthquake. The robots could access places that
are difficult for people to get to, detect objects, and deliver supplies.

3.2 Home Robotics

Home robots are generally developed for consumer convenience. They are programmed to help people
with everyday tasks, for example, cleaning a home without human supervision. The Neato D7 is the
latest vacuuming robot that has embedded sensors to help it map the layout of a home and remember
no-go zones and areas that have already been cleaned. According to Neato developers, there is more
room for improvement in how home robots learn about and respond to their environment. Other home
robots are developed to interact with humans. MIT Media Lab has a Personal Robots Group that
specializes in human-robot interaction. One of their goals is to create robots to help children learn,
assist kids in hospitals, and facilitate parent-children interaction.
3.3 Gaming Robots

Then, there are groups making robots for complex problem solving. This area of development focuses
more on embedded algorithms rather than motors. One industry leader is DeepMind, whose mission is
to develop robots that learn to solve problems autonomously; i.e. DeepMind robots’ thinking abilities
are self-taught. For example, the company’s AlphaGo robot is programmed to play a Chinese strategy
board game called Go, which involves obtaining territory. The robot gets better by playing game after
game. To date, AlphaGo’s thinking strategy can match world-class Go players.

3.4 Knowledge Sharing Robots

Per MIT Technology Review, a newer trend in AI is knowledge sharing. Robots are highly
sophisticated learners that can also be programmed to teach other robots as well. Learning from another
robot is faster than learning alone. The reason is that alone, a robot uses repetition to learn a task like
picking up an object; this can take many hours. Yet a robot that’s mastered a task can teach another
robot with similar design and motors how to complete the task in a shorter amount of time. Researchers
at Brown University who are piloting this knowledge sharing effort are also working on how to
improve robots’ learning ability, such as improvising the software that enables robots to fine-tune their
actions.
3.5 World’s First Robot

A large part of engineering is exploring possibilities. For AI development, it’s constantly adding new
capabilities to robots. Advancing hardware and software technologies help expand a robot’s decision
making, object recognition, and task completion functionalities. These new developments are exciting
for researchers and the world. For example, recently headlines have unveiled the world’s first robots
that can make pancakes from a WikiHow article. As well, the world was introduced to robots that
have their own knowledge base. New robot skills can amount to the creation of something amazing
further down the line. The research field of artificial intelligence and robotics engineering is ongoing
and limited perhaps only by imagination. Robots can be developed for practical tasks that increase
consumer convenience. Robots are also promising agents to act in emergency or hazardous situations.
The field is exciting for those who want to pursue AI. While specific developments are hard to predict,
it’s fair to expect researchers and the tech industry to continue expanding AI capacity and what robots
can do in the coming decade.
 CHAPTER 4

MAJOR FIELDS OF ROBOTS

Robotics is a diverse field related to construction, engineering, and operation of robots in many
commercial industries and consumer fields. Robotics involves the study of a physically
constructed technology system and its performance or role in any interface or new technology.
Sophisticated robot design typically requires the talents and expertise of teams of engineers.
There are five fields of expertise in robotics:

4.1 Operator Interface

A robot must be able to communicate with its human controller. The interface is the mechanism
of communication between the person and the robot. For example, a joystick controller for a
video game is an interface used to communicate with the game.

4.2 Mobility or Locomotion

Locomotion is how the robot gets from place to place--how it moves in its environment. Mobility
can be achieved with wheels, legs, fins, propellers, and much more.
4.3 Manipulator and Effectors

The parts of the robot that interact with objects may touch things, pick them up, place them in
containers, spray them with paint, and more. Examples include claws, pushers, and mechanical
arms and fingers.

4.4 Programming

Programming is how you talk to a machine. Some forms of advanced programming allow a robot
to learn and adapt to changes in its environment.
In real-world robots, the software that generates the control signals (the “controller”) is required
to run at an exceedingly high speed and make complex computations. This affects the choice of
which robot programming languages are best to use: Usually, C++ is used for these kinds of
scenarios, but in simpler robotics applications, Python is a particularly good compromise
between execution speed and ease of development and testing.
4.5 Sensing and Perception

 A robot needs information from sensors to know where it is, to go where it needs to go, and to
avoid obstacles.
 CHAPTER 5

ROBOTICS IN SPACE EXPLORATION

Space exploration missions can be classified as earth orbiting, solar and planetary orbital
missions, and surface probes. A spacelab instrument program would put a large package of
scientific instruments into earth orbit. Long term observations of the sun from earth orbit and
solar mapping could be accomplished by an earth orbital solar observatory. An astrophysics
space lab would look toward outer space for surveys of objects and phenomena. A research
program aimed at modelling the atmosphere could be carried out by an atmospheric
physics laboratory. The performance of many large antennas and telescopes is limited by their
physical size and geometric precision. The zero-gravity environment of earth orbit allows very
large structures, with dimensions measured in kilometres. In addition, earth orbit is far removed
from the optical and radio haze which pervades the atmosphere. An X-ray observatory orbiting
the earth could use the high bandwidth of X-rays to study other stars and galaxies. Intergalactic
phenomena could also be investigated by space-based radio telescopes with reflectors up to three
kilometres in diameter. Bekey and Naugle [9] have proposed space-based devices for
detecting gravity waves. astronomers for improving angular resolution of astronomical
measurements, and very long base interferometry, using a baseline between orbiting and ground
antennas, to accurately measure distances of astronomical objects. A second category of space
exploration missions utilizes solar and planetary orbiters. 'I'hc Gnlilco-Jupiter orbiter, scheduled
to fly in 1985. will release a probe into the Jovian atmosphere and will repandly engage in
closc flybys with Jupiter's moons. A Saturn orbiter dual probe would rclcusc a probc into
Saturn's atmosphere and also a hard landing probc onto'fitan, one of Saturn's moons. 'l'hc surface
of Venus could bc mapped with synthetic apcrturc orbital imaging radar. A solar polar mission
calls for a spacecraft to orbit the Sun out of the ecliptic plane.
A third class of space exploration missions is compriscd of surface probes. in particular probes of
Mars and thc moon. A proposed Mars samplc return mission would include vchiclcs for
dcsccnding to thc surface and returning to the orbitcrs, devices to pcnctratc the surfacc, airplanes
that would fly in thc atmosphcrc, and roving surfitcc vchiclcs. 'l'hc surface of thc moon could be
survcycd and prospcctcd for rcsourccs using lunar rovers.

Space robots are important to our overall ability to operate in space because they can perform
tasks less expensively or on an accelerated schedule, with less risk and occasionally with
improved performance over humans doing the same tasks. They operate for long durations, often
“asleep” for long periods before their operational mission begins. They can be sent into
situations that are so risky that humans would not be allowed to go. Indeed, every space robot
mission beyond Earth orbit has been a “suicide mission” in that the robot is left in place when it
stops operating, since the cost of return-to-Earth is (literally) astronomical (and
that cost would be better spent in return of scientific samples in almost every case). Missions to
distant targets such as Titan (a moon of Saturn thought to have liquid methane lakes or rivers)
presently require a substantial fraction of a human lifetime during the transit from Earth to the
destination. Access to space is expensive (currently about $10,000 for every kilogram lofted into
Low Earth Orbit (LEO)), implying that, for certain jobs, robots that are smaller than a human and
require much less infrastructure (e.g. life support) makes them very attractive for broad classes of
missions.

There are four key issues in Space Robotics. These are Mobility—moving quickly and
accurately between
two points without collisions and without putting the robots, astronauts, or any part of the
worksite at risk, Manipulation—using arms and hands to contact worksite elements safely,
quickly, and accurately without accidentally contacting unintended objects or imparting
excessive forces beyond those needed for the task, Time Delay—allowing a distant human to
effectively command the robot to do useful work, and Extreme Environments—operating
despite intense heat or cold, ionizing radiation, hard vacuum, corrosive atmospheres, very fine
dust, etc.
There is a path planner for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER), which permits the vehicles to
plan their own safe paths through obstacle fields, eliminating the need for moment-to-moment
interaction with humans on Earth. The “supervisory control” provided by human operators is at a
higher level, allowing the vehicle to stay productive even though humans only give one set of
commands each day. This approach to managing the time delay works for both mobility and for
manipulation—commands are given to move either the vehicle or the arm through nominal
waypoints, avoiding any impending collisions detected by onboard sensors. Expectations are
generated for what sensors should read (e.g. overall vehicle pitch, roll, motor currents) and any
deviations outside of the expected range will cause the vehicle to “call home” for help.
These approaches are still in their infancy—better sensing is needed to detect impending unsafe
conditions or possible collisions, especially for manipulation. The ability to manage contact
forces during manipulation is also very primitive. Shown in Figure 3.6 is a computer aided
design (CAD) rendering of the Ranger system developed by the University of Maryland to
demonstrate advanced space manipulation in the payload bay of the space shuttle. These systems
were extensively developed in underwater neutral-buoyancy tests to demonstrate useful task-
board operations despite several seconds of speed-of-light round-trip between the
human operator on the ground and the robot.
All space robots share a need to operate in extreme environments. Generally this includes
increased levels of ionizing radiation, requiring non-commercial electronics that have been
specially designed and/or qualified for use in such environments. The thermal environment is
also generally much different from terrestrial systems, requiring at a minimum systems that are
cooled not by air or convection, but by conduction. Many space environments routinely get
significantly hotter or colder than the design limits for normal commercial or military
components. In such cases, the space robot designer faces a choice of whether to put those
components into a special thermal enclosure to maintain a more moderate environment, or to
attempt to qualify components outside their recommended operating conditions. Both approaches
have been used with success, but at significant cost. The Mars Exploration Rover created by the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a good example of a space robot. The twin MER rovers “Spirit” and
“Opportunity” have collectively taken over 80,000 images and 1.5 million spectra since arriving
on Mars in January 2004 (Bowen, 2005). Figure 3.7 shows one of the MER robot arms
placing an instrument against a rock. The arm carries multiple instruments to get different sorts
of spectra, and also a Rock Abrasion Tool that can grind the rock surface to expose a fresh face
of unweathered rock. Robonaut (Figure 3.8) is an “astronaut-equivalent” robot being developed
at the Johnson Space Center. The central premise of robonaut is that a robot that is about the
same size, strength, and dexterity as a suited astronaut will be able to use all the same tools,
handholds, and implements as the astronaut, and so will be able to “seamlessly” complement and
supplement human astronauts. The robonaut prototypes have fivefingered
anthropomorphic hands each with 14 degrees of freedom (DOF) (e.g. different motors), sized to
match the strength and range-of-motion of a gloved hand of an EVA astronaut.
 Fig: Vyommitra

Vyommitra (Vyom Mitrā; lit. 'Space friend') is a female-looking spacefaring humanoid

robot being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation to function on-board
the Gaganyaan, a crewed orbital spacecraft. Vyommitra was first unveiled on 22 January 2020 at
the Human Spaceflight and Exploration symposium in Bengaluru.[1][2]
It will accompany Indian astronauts in space missions and will also be a part of uncrewed
experimental Gaganyaan missions prior to the crewed spaceflight missions.
India aims not to fly animals onboard experimental missions unlike other nations that have
carried out human space flight. Instead, it will fly humanoid robots for a better understanding of
what weightlessness and radiation do to the human body during long durations in space.[4]
Vyommitra is expected to be onboard uncrewed Gaganyaan missions
to microgravity experiments and support astronauts in crewed missions. It is programmed to
speak Hindi and English and perform multiple tasks.[5][6][7][8] It can mimic human activity,
recognise other humans, and respond to their queries. Technically, it can perform environment
control and life support systems functions, handle switch panel operations, and give
environmental air pressure change warnings.[3]