Components to Robotics

There are many components required for building a robot. However, the components are classified into four major categories like components for structure, power source, actuation and sensing.

Structure: Of course, all robots will have a mechanical structure, and these structures are called kinematics in the field of robotics. The structure, which is given to some robots, will be quite similar to that of a normal human being. The chain is formed by making use of links, actuators and degrees of freedom used in joints. The links will act as bones in robots and the actuators will act as muscles in robots and thereby, making robots similar to human beings. Serial chains are found to be used in most of the robots, which are contemporary. In a serial chain, there will be links serially connected one after the other.

Power Source: As the name itself suggests, power source is a source of power, which provides the power for robots to do the tasks. The batteries made up of lead-acid composition are mostly used in the robots that we are seeing today. In addition, for potential power, there is a wide range of power sources available like hydraulics, pneumatics, organic garbage etc.

Actuation: As mentioned before, the actuators will act like muscles in the body system of robots. Well, the task of the actuators is to convert the energy stored into actions. There is a wide range of actuators used in robots like electric motors, linear actuators, air muscles, muscle wire, electro active polymers etc.

Sensing: One of the great things of the modern robots is the ability for sensing. The modern robots can touch and see. There are artificial receptors being introduced to the body of the robots especially finger tips in order to feel the touch. There are cameras is the eyes of the robots in order to capture the video sequences.

Questions:

• What are actuators?
• What is a serial chain of links?