What is a Robot?
Take a moment to reflect on the various machines in the illustration above.
Which one would you consider a robot? Some? None? All?
The word Robot was coined by the European author and playwright, Karl Capek, in a play about androids (humanoid robots) taking over the world...
The idea comes from a Slavic word that means servitude and drudgery, which is farily apt looking at the way robots are used in industrial automation.
Today, almost anything automated is called a robot, from factory robot arms to driverless cars, from chatbots to other types of software that automate some business or organizational process (bot).
We are going to focus mainly on the class of physical robots that most resemble driverless cars...
As such, our robots will all share some basic electronic & mechanical elements:
- Computer Brain
- Body / Frame
- Motors
- Sensors
- Wires
In GearsBot, we don't need to worry about the Brain, which usually requires an electronic microcontroller with casing and wires coming out of it to sensors, actuators, and sometimes, an external power source.
We also have the luxury of working with some alternative actuation you don't see very often, like a paintball launcher!