Laws, of robots

And this brings me back to Asimov, and his Second Law (of Robotics) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings [...] . It is certainly not as simple as that when it comes to (vanadium) chemistry. A couple of days ago, I ran into Bart Hessen (University of Groningen) at a meeting in Boston, MA. We talked about the ups and the (more frequent) pitfalls of vanadium chemistry, or, as he put it, I love vanadium because it is such a nasty element . I am pretty convinced, certainly also by my own experiences, that, if you are sufficiently decided, even this element will obey . 

Isaac Asimov, a science fiction writer, used the word robotics in 1941 to describe the technology of robots. He was the first to predict that robotics would become a powerful new industry. In 1942, Asimov wrote Runaround, which was a story about robots. In this story, he developed the three laws of robotics (Figure 17-22). These laws have been widely referenced by roboticists ever since they were first pubhshed. 

The origin of HRI as a discrete safety concern was established by author Isaac Asimov in 1941, in his novel I, Robot, where he states the Three Laws of Robotics as follows ... 

The three laws of robotics determine the idea of safe interaction between humans and robots. The closer the human and the robot get, the higher the risk of injury. In industry, this is solved by not allowing the human and robot share the workspace at any time through the extensive use of work zones. The presence of a human is completely forbidden in some zones while the robot is working in that zone, and vice versa. 

The Three Laws of Robotics developed by Isaac Asimov in his books on robots (circa 1939) provide a good example of safety precepts. These precepts merely state what the end goal must be, but not how to specifically accomplish the end goal. The detailed implementation could be different for different robotic systems, or it could change as technology improves. The Three Laws of Robotics are ... 

Schwarzenegger, at the time best known for his role as a robotic assassin in the Terminator films, was immediately declared the sensible choice and the front-runner. The weekend after his announcement, he and his family flew to Massachusetts for a visit with his in-laws— the Kennedy family. Politics is the Kennedys lifeblood, and he was peppered with questions about his platform, his policies, his plans, his staff, and his campaign. At that point he could offer few specifics beyond the conviction that someone from outside Sacramento with a businessman s eye and a nonpolitical perspective—this is how he defined himself at the time—could bring fresh ideas to the task of fixing California s considerable problems. One of the areas he intended to tackle was the environment, he said, because the dirty ocean, beaches, and air in Southern California troubled him. He needed help to translate his concerns into policies, though. As it happened, there was an... 

Asking appropriate questions can also stimulate conceptual adaptation. For example, we are working on the development of a new type of a vacuum cleaner. One of the participants has brought to our brainstorming session a recently developed Roomba 880 vacuum cleaner, which is a robotic device and is considered to be one of the most advanced vacuum cleaners on the market. Several US patents protect its design, but we still may adapt some of its ideas without violating US patent laws. Here we have examples of questions ... 

Fuzzy models have been employed in robotics to establish the inverse dynamic model for a robot manipulator in its joint space (Qiao and Zhu 2000) or to avoid complex analytical formulation of isotropic target impedance and xmcertainty of parameters related to the robot and environment model through a new fuzzy impedance control law (Petrovic and Milacic 1998). Furthermore, fuzzy inference has been introduced into variable structure adaptive control for the nonlinear robot manipulator systems giving robusmess against system xmcertainties and external disturbances (Zhao and Zhu 1995). 

This review chapter focuses on the state of the art in the emerging field of nanorobotics, its applications and discusses in brief some of the essential properties and dynamical laws which make this field more challenging and unique than its macroscale counterpart. This chapter is only reviewing nanoscale robotic devices and does not include studies related to nanoprecision tasks with macrorobotic devices that are usually included in the field of nanorobotics. 

When interpreting the results from the assessment of the material it should be noted that the search was aimed at PES relevant documents concerned with hardware and software as well as documents relevant for robotics. This means that mandatory requirements in non-PES documents having an impact on PESs may easily have been overlooked. An example of this is found, if a document requires a mechanical device to be applied in a specific situation, thereby excluding the possibility of using a PES for that application. Another example is a general requirement, e.g. in a national law, that specific safety levels must be fulfilled in devices used in certain applications. Such a requirement may not have been found in the present search. 

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