Autonomous Robotics: How an Autonomous Robot will be on the Cover of Time Magazine?

By Fouad Sabry

What Is Autonomous Robotics

An autonomous robot is a robot that conducts behaviors or performs tasks autonomously (without external influence). Autonomous robotics is commonly regarded as a branch of artificial intelligence, robotics, and information engineering.

How You Will Benefit

- Answering the public top questions about autonomous robotics.
- Real world examples for the usage of robots in many industries and corporations.
- 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technology in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of robotics' technologies.
- Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Autonomous Robot
Chapter 2: Behavior-Based Robotics
Chapter 3: Robot Learning
Chapter 4: Cloud Robotics
Chapter 5: Ubiquitous Robot
Chapter 6: Swarm Robotics
Chapter 7: Fog robotics
Chapter 8: Robotic Sensing
Chapter 9: Robotic sensors
Chapter 10: Robot navigation
Chapter 11: Simultaneous localization and mapping
Chapter 12: Teleoperation
Chapter 13: Telerobotics
Chapter 14: Bio-inspired robotics
Chapter 15: Biorobotics
Chapter 16: Cognitive robotics
Chapter 17: Developmental robotics
Chapter 18: Domestic robot
Chapter 19: Evolutionary robotics
Chapter 20: Humanoid robot
Chapter 21: Microbotics
Chapter 22: Robotics
Chapter 23: Industrial robot
Chapter 24: PatrolBot
Chapter 25: Amazon Scout
Chapter 26: RoboBee
Chapter 27: Robomow
Chapter 28: Wake-up robot problem
Chapter 29: Kidnapped robot problem
Chapter 30: Three Laws of Robotics

Who This Book Is For

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of robot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021

Book preview

Quotes

In 30 years, a robot will likely be on the cover of time magazine as the best CEO.  Machines will do what human beings are incapable of doing.  Machines will partner and cooperate with humans, rather than become mankind’s biggest enemy. ~Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.

Let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics…. We have: one, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. ~Isaac Asimov.

Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver. ~Diane Ackerman.

We have to face the fact that countries are going to lose jobs to robotics. The only question that needs to be answered is which country will create and own the best robotic technology and have the infrastructure necessary to enable it. ~Mark Cuban.

Sooner or later, the U.S. will face mounting job losses due to advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. ~Oren Etzioni.

What to do about mass unemployment? This is going to be a massive social challenge.  There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better [than a human].  These are not things that I wish will happen.  These are simply things that I think probably will happen. ~Elon Musk.

Increasingly, the work we do is enabled more and more by new IT, including automation, robotics, and intelligent platforms.  ~Pierre Nanterme.

There are an endless number of things to discover about robotics. A lot of it is just too fantastic for people to believe. ~Daniel H. Wilson.

The higher the minimum wage goes, the lower the threshold will go for robots to replace humans in many minimum-wage roles. ~Tom Purcell.

The robots of the cartoons and movies from the 1970s are going to be the reality of the 2020s. ~Alec Ross.

Robotics is a technology that doesn’t inherently have any good or bad effects to it. You could use a hammer to hit a nail, or you can use a hammer to hurt somebody. ~Shyam Sundar.

When fake news meets artificial intelligence (AI), the risk is robots will lie, leaving us with fake intelligence and artificial news, or exactly where we are now. ~Jim Vibert.

Autonomous Robotics

Other Books by The Author

1 – Smart Machines

2 – Brain Computer Interface

3 – Swarm Intelligence

4 – Autonomous Vehicles

5 – Autonomous Drones

6 – Autonomous Robotics

***

One Billion Knowledgeable

Autonomous Robotics

How an Autonomous Robot will be on the Cover of Time Magazine?

Fouad Sabry

Copyright

Autonomous Robotics Copyright © 2021 by Fouad Sabry. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover designed by Fouad Sabry.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Bonus

You can send an email to [e-mail] with the subject line Autonomous Robotics: How an Autonomous Robot will be on the Cover of Time Magazine?, or just click on this link and click on send on your email client, and you will receive an email which contains the first few chapters of this book.

Fouad Sabry

Visit 1BK website at

www.1BKOfficial.org

Preface

Why did I write this book?

The story of writing this book started on 1989, when I was a student in the Secondary School of Advanced Students.

It is remarkably like the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Schools, which are now available in many advanced countries.

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. This term is typically used to address an education policy or a curriculum choice in schools. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy.

There was a weekly class in the library, where each student is free to choose any book and read for 1 hour. The objective of the class is to encourage the students to read subjects other than the educational curriculum.

In the library, while I was looking at the books on the shelves, I noticed huge books, total of 5,000 pages in 5 parts. The books name is The Encyclopedia of Technology, which describes everything around us, from absolute zero to semiconductors, almost every technology, at that time, was explained with colorful illustrations and simple words. I started to read the encyclopedia, and of course, I was not able to finish it in the 1-hour weekly class.

So, I convinced my father to buy the encyclopedia. My father bought all the technology tools for me in the beginning of my life, the first computer and the first technology encyclopedia, and both have a great impact on myself and my career.

I have finished the entire encyclopedia in the same summer vacation of this year, and then I started to see how the universe works and to how to apply that knowledge to everyday problems.

My passion to the technology started mor than 30 years ago and still the journey goes on.

This book is part of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies which is my attempt to give the readers the same amazing experience I had when I was in high school, but instead of 20th century technologies, I am more interested in the 21st century emerging technologies, applications, and industry solutions.

The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies will consist of 365 books, each book will be focused on one single emerging technology. You can read the list of emerging technologies and their categorization by industry in the part of Coming Soon, at the end of the book.

365 books to give the readers the chance to increase their knowledge on one single emerging technology every day within the course of one year period.

***

Introduction

How did I write this book?

In every book of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies, I am trying to get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of the people, trying to answer their questions about the emerging technology.

There are 3 billion Google searches every day, and 20% of those have never been seen before. They are like a direct line to the people thoughts.

Sometimes that’s ‘How do I remove paper jam’. Other times, it is the wrenching fears and secret hankerings they would only ever dare share with Google.

In my pursuit to discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas about Autonomous Robotics, I use many tools to listen into autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question, the people are asking around the keyword Autonomous Robotics.

It is a goldmine of people insight, I can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. The kind people, like you, really want.

People searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche. Therefore, this book is a live product, and constantly updated by more and more answers for new questions about Autonomous Robotics, asked by people, just like you and me, wondering about this new emerging technology and would like to know more about it.

The approach for writing this book is to get a deeper level of understanding of how people search around Autonomous Robotics, revealing questions and queries which I would not necessarily think off the top of my head, and answering these questions in super easy and digestible words, and to navigate the book around in a straightforward way.

So, when it comes to writing this book, I have ensured that it is as optimized and targeted as possible. This book purpose is helping the people to further understand and grow their knowledge about Autonomous Robotics. I am trying to answer people’s questions as closely as possible and showing a lot more.

It is a fantastic, and beautiful way to explore questions and problems that the peoples have and answer them directly, and add insight, validation, and creativity to the content of the book – even pitches and proposals. The book uncovers rich, less crowded, and sometimes surprising areas of research demand I would not otherwise reach. There is no doubt that, it is expected to increase the knowledge of the potential readers’ minds, after reading the book using this approach.

I have applied a unique approach to make the content of this book always fresh. This approach depends on listening to the people minds, by using the search listening tools. This approach helped me to:

Meet the readers exactly where they are, so I can create relevant content that strikes a chord and drives more understanding to the topic.

Keep my finger firmly on the pulse, so I can get updates when people talk about this emerging technology in new ways and monitor trends over time.

Uncover hidden treasures of questions need answers about the emerging technology to discover unexpected insights and hidden niches that boost the relevancy of the content and give it a winning edge.

Stop wasting time on gutfeel and guesswork about the content wanted by the readers and fill the book content with what the people need and say goodbye to the endless content ideas based on speculations.

Make solid decisions, and take fewer risks, to get front row seats to what people want to read and want to know — in real time — and use search data to make bold decisions, about which topics to include and which topics to exclude.

Streamline my content production to identify content ideas without manually having to sift through individual opinions to save days and even weeks of time.

It is wonderful to help the people to increase their knowledge in a straightforward way by just answering their questions.

I think the approach of writing of this book is unique as It collates, and tracks the important questions being asked by the readers on search engines.

***

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is harder than I thought and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. None of this would have been possible without the work completed by prestigious researchers, and I would like to acknowledge their efforts to increase the knowledge of the public about this emerging technology.

***

Dedication

To the enlightened, the ones who see things differently, and want the world to be better -- they are not fond of the status quo or the existing state ... You can disagree with them too much, and you can argue with them even more, but you cannot ignore them, and you cannot underestimate them, because they always change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones or amateur, others see genius and innovators, because the ones who are enlightened enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do, and lead the people to the enlightenment.

***

Epigraph

In 30 years, a robot will likely be on the cover of time magazine as the best CEO.  Machines will do what human beings are incapable of doing.  Machines will partner and cooperate with humans, rather than become mankind’s biggest enemy. ~Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.

***

Table of Contents

Quotes

Other Books by The Author

Copyright

Bonus

Preface

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1: Autonomous Robot

Chapter 2: Behavior-Based Robotics

Chapter 3: Robot Learning

Chapter 4: Cloud Robotics

Chapter 5: Ubiquitous Robot

Chapter 6: Swarm Robotics

Chapter 7: Fog robotics

Chapter 8: Robotic Sensing

Chapter 9: Robotic sensors

Chapter 10: Robot navigation

Chapter 11: Simultaneous localization and mapping

Chapter 12: Teleoperation

Chapter 13: Telerobotics

Chapter 14: Bio-inspired robotics

Chapter 15: Biorobotics

Chapter 16: Cognitive robotics

Chapter 17: Developmental robotics

Chapter 18: Domestic robot

Chapter 19: Evolutionary robotics

Chapter 20: Humanoid robot

Chapter 21: Microbotics

Chapter 22: Robotics

Chapter 23: Industrial robot

Chapter 24: PatrolBot

Chapter 25: Amazon Scout

Chapter 26: RoboBee

Chapter 27: Robomow

Chapter 28: Wake-up robot problem

Chapter 29: Kidnapped robot problem

Chapter 30: Three Laws of Robotics

Epilogue

About the Author

Coming Soon

Appendices: Emerging Technologies in Each Industry

***

Chapter 1: Autonomous Robot

An autonomous robot, also known as an auto-robot or auto-bot, is a robot that performs behaviors or tasks autonomously (without external influence). Autonomous robotics is commonly regarded as a branch of artificial intelligence, robotics, and information engineering. Author/inventor David L. Heiserman proposed and demonstrated early versions.

Autonomous robots are especially desirable in fields such as spaceflight, household maintenance (such as cleaning), wastewater treatment, and goods and services delivery.

Within the strict confines of their immediate environment, some modern factory robots are autonomous. Although not every degree of freedom exists in their surroundings, the factory robot's workplace is challenging and frequently contains chaotic, unpredictability variables. The precise orientation and position of the next object of work, as well as the type of object and the required task (in more advanced factories), must be determined. This can change unexpectedly (at least from the robot's perspective).

One important area of robotics research is enabling the robot to adapt to its surroundings, whether on land, underwater, in the air, underground, or in space.

A fully autonomous robot is capable of

Learn more about the environment.

Work for an extended period of time without human intervention Move all or a portion of itself throughout its operating environment without human intervention

Unless it is part of its design specifications, avoid situations that are harmful to people, property, or itself.

An autonomous robot may also learn or gain new knowledge, such as adapting to new methods of completing tasks or adapting to changing environments.

Autonomous robots, like all machines, require routine maintenance.

Components And Criteria of Robotic Autonomy

Self-Maintenance

The ability of a robot to care for itself is the first requirement for complete physical autonomy. Many battery-powered robots on the market today can locate and connect to a charging station, and some toys, such as Sony's Aibo, can self-charge their batteries.

Self-maintenance is based on proprioception, or the ability to sense one's own internal state. In the battery charging example, the robot can detect proprioceptively that its batteries are running low and seeks a charger. Heat monitoring is another common application for proprioceptive sensors. Proprioception will need to be improved for robots to work autonomously near people and in harsh environments. Thermal, optical, and haptic sensing, as well as the Hall effect, are examples of common proprioceptive sensors (electric).

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated

In the lower right-hand corner, a robot GUI displays battery voltage and other proprioceptive data. The display is only for the user's convenience. To keep themselves safe and operating properly, autonomous robots monitor and respond to proprioceptive sensors without human intervention.

Sensing The Environment

Exteroception is the ability to sense things in the environment. To perform their tasks and avoid danger, autonomous robots must be equipped with a variety of environmental sensors.

The electromagnetic spectrum, sound, touch, chemical (smell, odor), temperature, range to various objects, and altitude are all examples of common exteroceptive sensors.

Some robotic lawn mowers will adjust their programming to detect the rate at which grass grows in order to maintain a perfectly cut lawn, and some vacuum cleaning robots have dirt detectors that detect how much dirt is being picked up and use this information to tell them to stay in one area longer.

Task Performance

The following step in autonomous behavior is to complete a physical task. Domestic robots are a new area that is showing commercial promise, with a flood of small vacuuming robots beginning in 2002 with iRobot and Electrolux. While the level of intelligence in these systems is not high, they use contact and non-contact sensors to navigate over large areas and pilot in tight situations around homes. Both robots employ proprietary algorithms to provide greater coverage than simple random bounce.

The next level of autonomous task performance necessitates the performance of conditional tasks by a robot. Security robots, for example, can be programmed to detect intruders and respond in a specific way based on where the intruder is.

Autonomous Navigation

Indoor Navigation

To associate behaviors with a location (localization), a robot must first know where it is and be able to navigate point-to-point. Such navigation began with wire-guidance in the 1970s and progressed to beacon-based triangulation in the early 2000s. Commercial robots currently navigate autonomously by sensing natural features. Pyxus' HelpMate hospital robot and the CyberMotion guard robot, both designed by robotics pioneers in the 1980s, were the first commercial robots to achieve this. Originally, these robots navigated buildings using manually created CAD floor plans, sonar sensing, and wall-following variations. The next generation, such as MobileRobots' PatrolBot and autonomous wheelchair, both introduced in 2004, can create their own laser-based maps of a building and navigate both open areas and corridors. If something gets in the way, their control system changes its path on the fly.

Initially, autonomous navigation relied on planar sensors, such as laser rangefinders, which can only sense on a single level. The most advanced systems now combine data from multiple sensors for localization (position) and navigation. Motivity, for example, can rely on different sensors in different areas, depending on which provides the most reliable data at the time, and can autonomously re-map a building.

Instead of climbing stairs, which necessitates highly specialized hardware, most indoor robots navigate handicapped-accessible areas, controlling elevators and electronic doors. Robots can now freely navigate indoors thanks to electronic access-control interfaces. At the moment, research is being conducted on autonomously climbing stairs and manually opening doors.

As these indoor techniques advance, vacuuming robots will be able to clean a specific user-specified room or an entire floor. Security robots will be able to surround intruders and close off exits collaboratively. These advancements also bring with them safeguards: internal maps of robots typically allow forbidden areas to be defined, preventing robots from entering certain regions autonomously.

Outdoor Navigation

Because obstacles are rare in the air, outdoor autonomy is easiest to achieve. Cruise missiles are dangerous, self-driving robots. Drone aircraft without pilots are increasingly being used for reconnaissance. Some of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can fly their entire mission without requiring any human intervention, with the exception of the landing, which may require a person to intervene via radio remote control. However, some drones can perform safe, automatic landings. The Autonomous spaceport drone ship was announced in 2014, and its first operational test is scheduled for December 2014.

Outdoor autonomy is the most difficult for ground vehicles to achieve because of:

Three-dimensional terrain

Great disparities in surface density

Weather exigencies

Instability of the sensed environment

Open Problems In Autonomous Robotics

There are several open problems in autonomous robotics that are unique to the field rather than being part of the broader AI research. Problems, according to George A. Bekey's Autonomous Robots: From Biological Inspiration to Implementation and Control, include ensuring that the robot can function correctly and does not run into obstacles on its own.

Energy self-sufficiency and foraging

Researchers interested in creating true artificial life are concerned not only with intelligent control, but also with the robot's ability to forage for its own resources (looking for food, which includes both energy and spare parts).

This is related to autonomous foraging, which is a concern in behavioral ecology, social anthropology, and human behavioral ecology, as well as robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.

History And Development

At an airbase, the Seekur and MDARS robots demonstrate their autonomous navigation and security capabilities.

The Seekur robot was the first commercially available robot with MDARS-like capabilities for general use by airports, utility plants, correctional facilities, and Homeland Security.

The Mars rovers MER-A and MER-B (now known as Spirit and Opportunity, respectively) can find the position of the sun and navigate themselves to destinations on the fly by:

Surface mapping using 3D vision

Calculating safe and unsafe surface areas within that field of vision

Creating optimal paths through the safe zone to the desired destination

Following the calculated route.

This cycle is repeated until the destination is reached or there is no known path to the destination.

ExoMars Rover, a planned ESA Rover, is capable of vision-based relative and absolute localization to autonomously navigate safe and efficient trajectories to targets by:

Using a pair of stereo cameras, create 3D models of the terrain surrounding the Rover.

Identifying safe and unsafe terrain areas, as well