Robotics Facts for Kids

A robot in action on Mars.

Robotics is a part of engineering and science. It has to do with the creation and building of robots, as well as computer programming. It is interdisciplinary, using mechanical, electrical and other kinds of engineering. Robots are sometimes used to do things that humans cannot, like finding and destroying bombs, or going places that are too hot, small, dangerous or distant for humans. Some robots look like humans, but most just look like machines.

Robotics comes from the word robot, which in turn comes from the Slavic word robota. Robota means labor, or work. Karel Čapek invented the word robot to use in a play. This play was called R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). The word robotics was first used by Isaac Asimov in his story "Liar!" published in 1941.

Simulacrum of Robotics

Alyosha (callsign：MPM-100) - Simulacrum of the Robonaut. - on Rosatom Official YouTube Channel

Images for kids

The Shadow robot hand system
Mechanical construction
Electrical aspect
A level of programming
The InSight lander with solar panels deployed in a cleanroom
A robotic leg powered by air muscles
KUKA industrial robot operating in a foundry
Puma, one of the first industrial robots
Baxter, a modern and versatile industrial robot developed by Rodney Brooks
Lefty, first checker playing robot
Segway in the Robot museum in Nagoya
TALON military robots used by the United States Army
Two robot snakes. Left one has 64 motors (with 2 degrees of freedom per segment), the right one 10.
Capuchin, a climbing robot
Robotic Fish: iSplash-II
The autonomous sailboat robot Vaimos
Radar, GPS, and lidar, are all combined to provide proper navigation and obstacle avoidance (vehicle developed for 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge)
Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions.
Puppet Magnus, a robot-manipulated marionette with complex control systems.
Experimental planar robot arm and sensor-based, open-architecture robot controller developed at Sunderland University, UK in 2000
RuBot II can manually resolve Rubik's cubes.
TOPIO, a humanoid robot, played ping pong at Tokyo IREX 2009.
Two Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers stand with three vehicles, providing a size comparison of three generations of Mars rovers. Front and center is the flight spare for the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder Project. On the left is a Mars Exploration Rover (MER) test vehicle that is a working sibling to Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a test rover for the Mars Science Laboratory, which landed Curiosity on Mars in 2012.
Sojourner is 65 cm (2.13 ft) long. The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are 1.6 m (5.2 ft) long. Curiosity on the right is 3 m (9.8 ft) long.
The SCORBOT-ER 4u educational robot
A robot technician builds small all-terrain robots. (Courtesy: MobileRobots, Inc.)

Robotics facts for kids

Simulacrum of Robotics

Images for kids

See also