History of Robotics

Robotics has its history starting from the era of ancient legends and myths. As we all know, many scientists have started building robots, especially industrial robots, which can be controlled with the help of digital technology. These robots are of course built by using artificial intelligence since 1960s. There are also many fictional stories about the robotics. In fact, the lliad is said to illustrate a story, wherein the god called Hephaestus was the one who started building robots by making use of golden hand made materials. On the other hand, during 400 BC, Tarentum’s Archytas is said to be highly appreciated for building a mechanical pigeon.

Reports suggest that this pigeon was capable of flying and it made use of steam power for flying. The great thing about this mechanical pigeon is was not only an early work in the field of robotics, on the other hand, it also gave rise to a basic idea of how flights can be built. In addition, the ancient Chinese people, who lived during the 3^rd century BC, were also interested in building some robots, which they called automata at that time. The history also suggests that one of the well known mechanical engineers in King Mu‘s dynasty called Yan Shi gifted him a handmade piece of mechanical work, which was quite familiar to human beings.

There are also some reports, which suggest that early clepsydra or water clocks were also an initial point to begin the study of robotics. There were many numbers of attempts made just in order to make these clocks automatic and finally a man called Ctesibius was successful in building an automatic clepsydra. However, after a few centuries, a writer of Czech called Karal Capek coined a term called robotics in his play for these automatically working machines.

Questions:

• What is a mechanical pigeon?
• Who coined the term robotics?