Types of Robots

The book names six main types of industrial robots by their mechanical geometry: Cartesian, SCARA (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm), Cylindrical, Delta, Polar, and Vertically articulated. It notes that six-axis robots specifically are ideal for arc welding, spot welding, material handling, machine tending, and other similar applications where a large, flexible range of motion is needed. These six geometries differ mainly in how their joints are arranged -- Cartesian robots move along three straight, perpendicular axes, Cylindrical and Polar robots combine rotary and linear joints, Delta robots hang from parallel arms for very fast pick-and-place work, SCARA arms are built for cont …

The aim of artificial intelligence, as the book frames it, is to bring human-like behaviour into robots. It lists five concrete tasks artificial intelligence is already used for: (1) face recognition; (2) providing a response to a player's actions in computer games; (3) taking decisions based on previous actions; (4) regulating traffic by analysing the density of traffic on roads; and (5) translating words from one language to another. Together these examples show AI less as a single capability and more as a fami …