1、附录 一 Entertainment Robots Sarcos, a Utah-based company, developed the robot shown at left. With 30 joints arranged in a torso supporting five branching chains, this is the most kinematically complex robot I have ever seen. Unlike most robots that are either electric or hydraulic, this robot utilizes
2、 pneumatic motors. Sarcos has developed some of the worlds most sophisticated humanoid robots and virtual reality interfaces. Sarcos entertainment robots are constructed not only to be high performance, but also to be sensitive and graceful. Sarcos has placed a great deal of emphasis on the aestheti
3、cs of its humanoid as well as the engineering. Its corporate staff includes leading designers, artists and craftspeople who style the robots. Concept development and graphic renderings are supported by a complete sculpting facility, where high-performance skins and other coverings are produced. They
4、 can be teleoperated by a remote operator wearing a SenSuit or by a computer-controlled playback of a preprogrammed show. Recently, a Sarcos robot named DB has been used by the ERATO brain project in Japan to enable motion learning. DB has 30 D.O.F. and is nicely packaged in an 80kg, 1.85m body. A t
5、ether connects DB with its air supply and control computers. Any discussion of entertainment robots has to include Disney. They have been doing entertainment robots as long as anyone and they do them quite well. With dancing bears and singing pirates Disneys imagineers have created thousands of robo
6、ts. The robot shown at left is new as of August, 2003. It is a robot dinosaur named Lucky. He walks on his two back legs and pulls a very large cart of silk flowers. Really the cart is full of batteries. Even Disney has not figured-out the battery issue that plagues mobile robots. This was the only
7、way they could get enough battery life for the robot to spend a meaningful amount of time wandering the amusement part. I dont do roller coasters, but Im sure my kids would love this. According to the manufacturer, KUKA Robotics, this is the first robot with world-wide certification to handle human
8、beings. KUKA makes robots of very high-quality, so I would let my kids ride. Heres a description from the KUKA site In the unique ROBOCOASTER from KUKA Roboter, the advantages of the practically unrestricted freedom of motion and excellent dynamic performance of an industrial robot have been exploit
9、ed in the leisure and amusement industry for the first time. And who can forget the consumer entertainment robots that have come onto the market in the last decade or so? From those little Furbys that go for around twenty bucks to Sonys Aibo (two of which are shown at left) that can top a thousand d
10、ollars a pop； these have been the first robots to really pervade our homes. One of the funniest things I have ever seen was my dog running around the house with a live Furby in its mouth. My dog would give it a shake every now and then and the Furby was going off like it was, well, like it was being
11、 shaken in a dogs The Lego Mindstorms are also a big player in this category. Future roboticists will likely remember their first Lego Mindstorms in the same way todays computer scientists remember their first TRS80 personal computer. Some entertainment robots are not much more than rolling, remote-
12、controlled speaker phones with video camera eyes. They can wander around at parties and play pre-recorded jingles or display scrolling messages to promote a companys products or distribute promotional literature. Florida Robotics makes robots like these. They also make more complex robots that have
13、the capability to talk with on-lookers and include fiber optic hair, remote Florida Robotics makes robots like these. They also make more complex robots that have the capability to talk with on-lookers and include fiber optic hair, remote smoke. Disney makes use of a Florida Robotics robot called X1
14、846 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. X1846 serves drinks there. Heck, Ill take a robot that can bring me a soda. Bug Robots I dont show many people on this site, but there is no discussion of bug robots without Rodney Brooks. He pretty much started the bug robot idea. There is so much infor
15、mation online about Rodney, his work at MIT and with iRobot that I am not even going to bother with that. I will tell you about a time I had lunch with him in the mid-1990s just off the StanfordUniversity campus. Im sure he doesnt remember. It was a group of ten or twenty people presenting research
16、work and I was lucky enough to sit at the same table as Rodney. We talked about our kids, our wives, the weather and none about robots. Hes a nice guy； with an unassuming, down-to-earth personality and an Australian accent. I do find it interesting that Rodneys robotics research has progressed from
17、bugs, to horses, to dogs and now on to humanoid robots. A kind of evolution in alifetime. The basic idea behind the bug robots was to try to understand very simple biologic creatures and create corresponding robots before trying to build highly complex robots that try to mimic human reasoning. Even
18、a fruit fly with less than twenty neural connections can fly, avoid obstacles,find food and mate (however it is that fruit flies mate). This idea makes a lot of sense, but in practicality building very tiny robots is quite difficult. It seems like the people who work on bug robots spend more time de
19、veloping techniques for building tiny robots than they do on studying bug behaviors and ways to mimicthem. If you want to give bug robots a try, you might consider the little BugBrain by Yost Engineering on the left. Those big whiskers on the front give the bug the ability to sense contacts with obj
20、ects in its environment and you can program the onboard computer to make decisions about how to react. Thats a true robot. You can add other sensors to it too. Maybe a phototransistor so the bug can run for the shadows like real bugs do? According to the manufacturer you can also add wireless RF and
21、 an ultrasonic range finder to the bug. That could give it sensing and decision making capabilities on-par with University researchrobots. The exploration of Mars is one application that has been proposed for bug robots. Instead of sending one or two big robots, send one or two thousand bug robots equipped with small cameras
