An industrial robot is a robot system used for manufacturing. Industrial robots are automated, programmable and capable of movement on three or more axes.
Canadarm or Canadarm1 is a series of robotic arms that were used on the Space Shuttle orbiters to deploy, manoeuvre, and capture payloads. After the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the Canadarm was always paired with the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS), which was used to inspect the exterior of the shuttle for damage to the thermal protection system.
FANUC is a Japanese group of companies that provide automation products and services such as robotics and computer numerical control wireless systems. These companies are principally FANUC Corporation of Japan, Fanuc America Corporation of Rochester Hills, Michigan, USA, and FANUC Europe Corporation S.A. of Luxembourg.
KUKA is a German manufacturer of industrial robots and factory automation systems owned by Chinese appliance manufacturer Midea Group.
Victor David Scheinman was an American pioneer in the field of robotics. He was born in Augusta, Georgia, where his father Léonard was stationed with the US Army. At the end of the war the family moved to Brooklyn and his father returned to work as a professor of psychiatry. His mother taught at a Hebrew school.
A coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is a device that measures the geometry of physical objects by sensing discrete points on the surface of the object with a probe. Various types of probes are used in CMMs, the most common being mechanical and laser sensors, though optical and white light sensor do exist. Depending on the machine, the probe position may be manually controlled by an operator or it may be computer controlled. CMMs typically specify a probe's position in terms of its displacement from a reference position in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. In addition to moving the probe along the X, Y, and Z axes, many machines also allow the probe angle to be controlled to allow measurement of surfaces that would otherwise be unreachable.
An articulated robot is a robot with rotary joints. Articulated robots can range from simple two-jointed structures to systems with 10 or more interacting joints and materials. They are powered by a variety of means, including electric motors.
A servomotor is a rotary actuator or linear actuator that allows for precise control of angular or linear position, velocity, and acceleration in a mechanical system. It consists of a suitable motor coupled to a sensor for position feedback. It also requires a relatively sophisticated controller, often a dedicated module designed specifically for use with servomotors.
EPSON Robots is the robotics design and manufacturing department of Japanese corporation Seiko Epson, the brand-name watch and computer printer producer.
A robot kit is a special construction kit for building robots, especially autonomous mobile robots.
Qfix robot kits are an education tool for teaching robotics. They are used in schools, high schools and mechatronics training in companies. The robot kits are also used by hobby robot builders. The qfix kits are often found in the RoboCup Junior competition where soccer robots are built of the kit's components.
Six degrees of freedom (6DOF), or sometimes six degrees of movement, refers to the six mechanical degrees of freedom of movement of a rigid body in three-dimensional space. Specifically, the body is free to change position as forward/backward (surge), up/down (heave), left/right (sway) translation in three perpendicular axes, combined with changes in orientation through rotation about three perpendicular axes, often termed yaw, pitch, and roll.
The SCARA is a type of industrial robot. The acronym stands for Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm or Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm.
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots. Robotics is related to the sciences of electronics, engineering, mechanics, and software. The word "robot" was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R., published in 1920. The term "robotics" was coined by Isaac Asimov in his 1941 science fiction short-story "Liar!"
The Omnibot (オムニボット) is a toy robot originally manufactured by Tomy in the mid-1980s. The name then came to apply to the successful line of robots manufactured by the company. The initial Omnibot was announced with expectations of restoring popular interest in robots, at a time when it was becoming obvious that robots with advanced AI such as R2-D2 were still a long way away. A more advanced version of the Omnibot was called the Omnibot 2000 and did not have a plastic bubble over its head. With the success of the Omnibots, the Omnibot range quickly expanded. After the video game crash of 1983 and its debilitating effect on the nascent home electronics industry, the Omnibot faded away but it was revived in the early 2000s. The latest version of the Omnibot is the i-SOBOT.
A robotic arm is a type of mechanical arm, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm; the arm may be the sum total of the mechanism or may be part of a more complex robot. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either rotational motion or translational (linear) displacement. The links of the manipulator can be considered to form a kinematic chain. The terminus of the kinematic chain of the manipulator is called the end effector and it is analogous to the human hand. However, the term "robotic hand" as a synonym of the robotic arm is often proscribed.
The Furuta pendulum, or rotational inverted pendulum, consists of a driven arm which rotates in the horizontal plane and a pendulum attached to that arm which is free to rotate in the vertical plane. It was invented in 1992 at Tokyo Institute of Technology by Katsuhisa Furuta and his colleagues. It is an example of a complex nonlinear oscillator of interest in control system theory. The pendulum is underactuated and extremely non-linear due to the gravitational forces and the coupling arising from the Coriolis and centripetal forces. Since then, dozens, possibly hundreds of papers and theses have used the system to demonstrate linear and non-linear control laws. The system has also been the subject of two texts.
TETRIX Robotics consists of two robotic kits by Pitsco Education. The two sets are the TETRIX® MAX building system and the TETRIX® PRIME building system. They are intended to be used as educational robotics and for competitions such as the FIRST Tech Challenge.
Robot Combat League (RCL) is a television show on the Syfy network about robot fighting competitions. On the show, teams use exosuits to control fighting robots. The series is hosted by Chris Jericho, and premiered on February 26, 2013 at 10 PM EST.
A high performance positioning system (HPPS) is a type of positioning system consisting of a piece of electromechanics equipment (e.g. an assembly of linear stages and rotary stages) that is capable of moving an object in a three-dimensional space within a work envelope. Positioning could be done point to point or along a desired path of motion. Position is typically defined in six degrees of freedom, including linear, in an x,y,z cartesian coordinate system, and angular orientation of yaw, pitch, roll. HPPS are used in many manufacturing processes to move an object (tool or part) smoothly and accurately in six degrees of freedom, along a desired path, at a desired orientation, with high acceleration, high deceleration, high velocity and low settling time. It is designed to quickly stop its motion and accurately place the moving object at its desired final position and orientation with minimal jittering.
