Representing position in binary - Answers
Q1. According to the British Computing Society's "A Glossary of Computing Terms", a robot is "a computer-controlled mechanical device which is sufficiently flexible to be able to do a variety of tasks".
Q2. Robots can be used to pack goods and move packages around a warehouse, in the manufacture of printed circuit boards, in some dangerous mining applications, to help users with disabilities perform some basic tasks, to vacuum the floor, to fill bottles with the correct prescribed pills and any other sensible example.
Q3. Robots are used to assemble cars in many factories because they can work almost 24 / 7 / 365, without breaks, never go on strike, can work to finer tolerances than people, can produce far more consist work than people, don’t get injured and don’t have the same health and safety issues that people have e.g. noisy environments on the shop floor or explosive environments, such as in a car painting area.
Q4. Robots tend to make many unskilled, low-paid jobs redundant. However, they do provide some skilled or semi-skilled opportunities as someone has to maintain the robots and program and reprogram them. In addition, they also have to be designed and built.
Q5. An actuator is a computer controlled device that causes movement e.g. a stepper motor, a solenoid valve, a pneumatic or hydraulic piston.
Q6. Feedback is the term used to describe when the output from a system is fed back into the system as an input, so it can then be used to make further refined changes to the output.
Q7. A proximity switch senses whether something is present or not.
Q8. Each of the ways of movement at any particular position is known as a degree of freedom. E.g. in the human body, the shoulder joint has 2 degrees of freedom. The elbow has one degree of freedom and the wrist has three degrees of freedom. The more degrees of freedom a position has, the more complex the movement that can be achieved.
Q9. Nanorobots have potential applications in medicine, where they can be used to fight disease by seeking out and destroying very specific targets such as bacteria in the body or cancers.
Q10. Disposal of bombs is very dangerous work. Despite their best efforts and wearing protective clothing, bomb disposal experts do get killed carrying out their job. By using robots, they can dispose of a bomb from a safe distance. If the disposal is unsuccessful, then the robot not a person is potentially damaged. In fact, bomb disposal robots are often designed and built in such a way that it is just part of the robot that gets destroyed in the event of an explosion. That part can then be quickly and relatively cheaply replaced.