Robotics

Robotics is an interdisciplinary field that integrates computing and

engineering. Robotics involves the design, construction, operation, and use of
robots. The goal of robotics is to style machines that will help and assist
humans. Robotics integrates fields of engineering, EE, information
engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering,
control engineering, and software engineering, among others.
Robotics develops machines that will substitute for humans and replicate
human actions. Robots are often utilized in many situations and for several
purposes, but today many are utilized 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 pack up and containment of hazardous materials
and radiation). Robots can combat any form but some are made to resemble
humans in appearance. this is often said to assist in the acceptance of a robot
in certain replicative behaviors usually performed by people. Such robots plan
to replicate walking, lifting, speech, cognition, or other act. Many of today's
robots are inspired naturally, contributing to the sector of bio-inspired
robotics. In 1948, Wiener formulated the principles of cybernetics, the idea of
practical robotics. Fully autonomous robots only appeared within the last half
of the 20th century. the primary digitally operated and programmable robot,
the Unimate, was installed in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from a die
casting machine and stack them. Commercial and industrial robots are
widespread today and wont to perform jobs more cheaply, more accurately,
and more reliably, than humans. they're extensively utilized in some jobs
which are too dirty, dangerous, or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots are
widely utilized in manufacturing, assembly, packing and packaging, mining,
transport, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research,
safety, and therefore the production of consumer and industrial goods.
Robotic aspects
There are many sorts of robots; they're utilized in many various environments
and for several different uses. Although being very diverse in application and
form, all of them share three basic similarities when it involves their
construction:
1. Robots all have some quite mechanical construction, a frame, form, or
shape designed to realize a specific task. for instance, a robot designed to
travel across heavy dirt or mud might use caterpillar tracks. The mechanical
aspect is usually the creator's solution to completing the assigned task and
handling the physics of the environment around it. Form follows function.
2. Robots have electrical components that power and control the machinery.
For instance, the robot with caterpillar tracks would wish some quiet power to
maneuver the tracker treads. That power comes from the sort of electricity,
which can need to travel through a wire and originate from A battery, a basic
circuit. Even petrol-powered machines that get their power mainly from petrol
still require an electrical current to start the combustion process which is why
most petrol-powered machines like cars, have batteries. The electrical aspect
of robots is employed for movement (through motors), sensing (where
electrical signals are wont to measure things like heat, sound, position,
and energy status), and operation (robots need some level of electricity
supplied to their motors and sensors to activate and perform basic operations)
3. All robots contain some level of programming code. A program is how a
robot decides when or the way to do something. Within the track example, a
robot that must move across a muddy road may have the right mechanical
construction and receive the right amount of power from its battery, but
wouldn't go anywhere without a program telling it to maneuver. Programs are
the essence of a robot, it could have excellent mechanical and electrical
construction, but if its program is poorly constructed its performance is going
to be very poor (or it's going to not perform at all). There are three different
types of robotic programs: remote, AI, and hybrid. A robot with remote
programming features a preexisting set of commands that it'll only perform if
and when it receives a sign from an impact source, typically a person's being
with a foreign control. it's perhaps more appropriate to look at devices
controlled primarily by human commands as falling within the discipline of
automation instead of robotics. Robots that use AI interact with their
environment on their own without an impact source, and may determine
reactions to things and problems they encounter using their preexisting
programming. Hybrid may be a sort of programming that comes with both AI
and RC functions in them. As more and more robots are designed for specific
tasks this method of classification becomes more relevant. for instance, many
robots are designed for assembly work, which can not be readily adaptable for
other applications. They’re termed "assembly robots". For seam welding,
some suppliers provide complete welding systems with the robot i.e. the
welding equipment alongside other material handling facilities like turntables,
etc. as an integrated unit. Such an integrated robotic system is named a
"welding robot" albeit its discrete manipulator unit might be adapted to a
spread of tasks. Some robots are specifically designed for heavy load
manipulation, and are labeled as "heavy-duty robots".

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. A subset of
artificial intelligence is machine learning (ML), which refers to the concept
that computer programs can automatically learn from and adapt to new data
without being assisted by humans. Deep learning techniques enable this
automatic learning through the absorption of huge amounts of unstructured
data such as text, images, or video.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation or approximation of
human intelligence in machines.
 • The goals of artificial intelligence include computer-enhanced learning,
reasoning, and perception.
• AI is being used today across different industries from finance to
healthcare.
• Weak AI tends to be simple and single-task oriented, while strong AI
carries on tasks that are more complex and human-like.
• Some critics fear that the extensive use of advanced AI can hurt society.
Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI)
When most people hear the term artificial intelligence, the first thing they
usually think of is robots. That's 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 and execute tasks, from the
simplest to those that are even more complex. The goals of artificial
intelligence include mimicking human cognitive activity. Researchers and
developers in the field are making surprisingly rapid strides in mimicking
activities such as learning, reasoning, and perception, to the extent that these
can be concretely defined. Some believe that innovators may soon be able to
develop systems that exceed the capacity of humans to learn or reason out any
subject. But others remain skeptical because all cognitive activity is laced with
value judgments that are subject to human experience.
As technology advances, previous benchmarks that defined artificial
intelligence become outdated. For example, machines that calculate basic
functions or recognize text through optical 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 on mathematics, computer
science, linguistics, psychology, and more.
Algorithms often play a very 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.
Applications of Artificial Intelligence
The applications for artificial intelligence are endless. The technology can be
applied to many different sectors and industries. AI is being tested and used in
the healthcare industry for dosing drugs and doling out different treatments
tailored to specific patients, and for aiding in surgical procedures in the
operating room.
Other examples of machines with artificial intelligence include computers that
play chess and self-driving cars. Each of these machines must weigh the
consequences of any action they take, as each action will impact the result. In
chess, the result is winning the game. For self-driving cars, the computer
system must account for all external data and compute it to act in a way that
prevents a collision.
Artificial intelligence also has applications in the financial industry, where it
is used to detect and flag activity in banking and finance such as unusual debit
card usage and large account deposits—all of which help a bank's fraud
department. Applications for AI are also being used to help streamline and
make trading easier. This is done by making the supply, demand, and pricing
of securities easier to estimate.
Types of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be divided into two different categories: weak and
strong. Weak artificial intelligence embodies a system designed to carry out
one particular job. Weak AI systems include video games such as the chess
example from above and personal assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and
Apple's Siri. You ask the assistant a question, and it answers it for you.
Strong artificial intelligence systems are systems that carry on the tasks
considered to be human-like. These tend to be more complex and complicated
systems. They are programmed to handle situations in which they may be
required to problem solve without having a person intervene. These kinds of
systems can be found in applications like self-driving cars or hospital
operating rooms.
Special Considerations
Since its beginning, artificial intelligence has come under scrutiny from
scientists and the public alike. One common theme is the idea that machines
will become so highly developed that humans will not be able to keep up and
they will take off on their own, redesigning themselves at an exponential rate.
Another is that machines can hack into people's privacy and even be
weaponized. Other arguments debate the ethics of artificial intelligence and
whether intelligent systems such as robots should be treated with the same
rights as humans.
Self-driving cars have been fairly controversial as their machines tend to be
designed for the lowest possible risk and the least casualties. If presented with
a scenario of colliding with one person or another at the same time, these cars
would calculate the option that would cause the least amount of damage.
Another contentious issue many people have with artificial intelligence is how
it may affect human employment. With many industries looking to automate
certain jobs through the use of intelligent machinery, there is a concern that
people would be pushed out of the workforce. Self-driving cars may remove
the need for taxis and car-share programs, while manufacturers may easily
replace human labor with machines, making people's skills obsolete.
The first artificial intelligence is thought to be a checkers-playing computer
built by Oxford University (UK) computer scientists in 1951.1
What Are the 4 Types of AI?
Artificial intelligence can be categorized into one of four types.
• Reactive AI uses algorithms to optimize outputs based on a set of
inputs. Chess-playing AIs, for example, are reactive systems that
optimize the best strategy to win the game. Reactive AI tends to be fairly
static, unable to learn or adapt to novel situations. Thus, it will produce
the same output given identical inputs.
 • Limited memory AI can adapt to experience or update itself based on
new observations or data. Often, the amount of updating is limited
(hence the name), and the length of memory is relatively short.
Autonomous vehicles, for example, can "read the road" and adapt to
novel situations, even "learning" from experience.
• Theory-of-mind AI is fully-adaptive and has an extensive ability to
learn and retain past experiences. These types of AI include advanced
chat-bots that could pass the Turing Test, fooling a person into believing
the AI was a human being. While advanced and impressive, these AI are
not self-aware.
• Self-aware AI, as the name suggests, becomes sentient and aware of its
existence. Still, in the realm of science fiction, some experts believe that
an AI will never become conscious or "alive".
How Is AI Used Today?
AI is used extensively across a range of applications today, with varying
levels of sophistication. Recommendation algorithms that suggest what you
might like next are popular AI implementations, as are chatbots that appear on
websites or in the form of smart speakers (e.g., Alexa or Siri). AI is used to
make predictions in terms of weather and financial forecasting, streamline
production processes, and cut down on various forms of redundant cognitive
labor (e.g., tax accounting or editing). AI is also used to play games, operate
autonomous vehicles, process language, and much, much, more.
How Is AI Used in Healthcare?
In healthcare settings, AI is used to assist in diagnostics. AI is very good at
identifying small anomalies in scans and can better triangulate diagnoses from
a patient's symptoms and vitals. AI is also used to classify patients, maintain
and track medical records, and deal with health insurance claims. Future
innovations are thought to include AI-assisted robotic surgery, virtual nurses
or doctors, and collaborative clinical judgment.
 Computer Programming

Computer programming is the process that professionals use to write code that
instructs how a computer, application, or software program performs. At its
most basic, computer programming is a set of instructions to facilitate specific
actions. If you're wondering what a computer programmer is, it's a
professional that creates instructions for a computer to execute by writing and
testing code that enables applications and software programs to operate
successfully. Computers can do amazing things, from basic laptops capable of
simple word processing and spreadsheet functions to incredibly complex
supercomputers completing millions of financial transactions a day and
controlling the infrastructure that makes modern life possible. But no
computer can do anything until a computer programmer tells it to behave in
specific ways. That’s what computer programming is all about. At its most
basic, computer programming is little more than a set of instructions to
facilitate specific actions. Based on the requirements or purposes of these
instructions, computer programming can be as simple as adding two numbers.
It can also be as complex as reading data from temperature sensors to adjust a
thermostat, sorting data to complete intricate scheduling or critical reports, or
taking players through multi-layered worlds and challenges in games.
computer programming is a collaborative process, with a variety of
programmers contributing during the development of a piece of software.
Some of that development can last decades. For software like Microsoft
Word released in 1983, instance, programmers have been tweaking and
improving it for years. "The hope is that the computer program will become
such a widely adopted system that it needs long-term support, particularly to
extend its current functionality," Frederick said. "The terms computer
software and computer programming are used interchangeably except
software can get rather large." Computer programmers create instructions for a
computer to execute by writing and testing code that enables applications and
software programs to operate successfully. Computer programmers use
specialized languages to communicate with computers, applications, and other
systems to get computers and computer networks to perform a set of specific
tasks. Languages like C++, Java, Python, and more allow programmers –
often working closely with software developers and engineers to build
programs that allow “search, surfing, and selfies,”. In pursuing a computer
science degree with a focus on software engineering, it’s important to learn in
a collaborative environment, whether in-person or virtually, as these
experiences will mirror what will be expected in the workplace. George noted
that students learn computer programming and build software in online labs
that provide independent work opportunities along with team collaboration.