CHAPTER

MEMS and Smart Sensors

10

Robotics and Mechatronics

Robotics draws on electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering to design, construct,
and operate robots for a variety of purposes. Although the term is somewhat vague in that it
can include trivially simple or devilishly complicated autonomous systems, the term is generally understood to mean automation and control in response to inputs. In the popular
domain, robots are often thought of as systems that embody artificial intelligence, but in
practice these are devices and systems that accomplish a task or a series of tasks based on
a preset program and, most importantly, in response to inputs. Some robots, of course, are
just automatathey perform a task or a series of tasks indefinitely. To this class belongs any
number of industrial robots. Others are more sophisticated in that they include a variety of
sensors and actuators to interact with their environment in a more intelligent way. The
sensors in a robot allow it to understand its environment, and the processors allow it to
process that data and act on it as necessary. Thus a robotic arm may be able to pick up an
egg without crushing it or to lift a car engine and place it in a car during production, provided
that it has the proper sensors and actuators and these have been programmed to handle the
task. Surprisingly perhaps, robotics and the idea of robots is not very new. Automata have
been designed and built at least as far back as the first century CE (Heron of Alexandria lived
between 10 and 70 CE, and in his Pneumatica and Automata described dozens of automatons with self-regulating mechanisms ranging from water clocks to special effects for the
theater). Even the concept of humanoid automata goes back to at least the thirteenth century. Leonardo de Vincis mechanical knight is well known among these. In art, literature, and
legend, robots are even more common. The Golem of Prague was built out of clay and
breathed with life through prayer by the Rabi of Prague to protect his people only to find out
that it had a will of its own. In Coppelia, a classic ballet, Dr. Coppelius, a kind of mad
inventor, builds a beautiful windup life-size doll that can dance and charm everybody until,
of course, she comes to a screeching halt when the spring unwinds. Even Pinocchio, who
started as a wooden doll, progresses to a robotic stage before he gets a soul. The term
robotics itself originated in a theater play (Rossums Universal Robots, 1920) before it
appears in science fiction in the 1940s and before its use in the context we know. Mechatronics is a concatenation of mechanical and electronics and is an approach aimed at the
integration of mechanics, electronics, control, and computer science/engineering in the
design of products to improve and optimize their functionality. As such, it is not limited to
robotics, although, mostly through fiction and movies, it sometimes takes the connotation of
science fiction or, more often, that of the integration of mechanical systems with living things.

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