Robotics Overview - Current and Future

Class schedule

	Class schedule	HW assignments (Including preparation and review of the class.)	Amount of Time Required
1.	Introduction to robotics: Introducing definitions, history of the robot and various academic disciplines relating robot, such as mechanical engineering, electric engineering, control engineering, computer science, psychology and cognitive science.	Survey of various robots	15minutes
2.	Basic elements of robots (1) sensors: Introducing various kinds of sensors applied to the robot, e.g., potentiometer, rotary encoder, strain gauge, thermistor, CCD, microphones, ultrasonic sensors and so on.	Survey of various sensors	15minutes
3.	Basic elements of robots (2) actuators: Introducing various kinds of actuators applied to the robot, e.g., DC motors (stepper, coreless, or direct drive), AC motors, servo motors, and so on.	Survey of various actuators	15minutes
4.	Basic elements of robots (3) mechanics: Introducing basic mechanisms of the robots including gears, cums, and links. And introducing basic structures of manipulators including the concept the degree of freedom , singular points and so on.	Survey of link structures	15minutes
5.	Controlling robots: Introducing basic concepts of the control methods of robots, e.g., open/closed loop control, forward/inverse kinematics. And also introducing concrete control methods including PID control, several modern control theories and neural networks.	Survey of control methodology of robots	15minutes
6.	Intelligence: Introducing an overview and a history of artificial intelligence (AI) system. Specifically, focusing on that current AI systems are based on physical symbol system hypothesis that exclude the uncertainty of the physical world where the robots should work.	Survey of current AI technology	15minutes
7.	Robots as computers with physical body: Introducing natures of human intelligence based on the findings of psychology and cognitive sciences. And focusing on the differences between current AI system and human intelligence in terms of their physical properties.	Survey of human intelligence	15minutes
8.	Role of embodiment: Introducing a philosophical concept of “embodiment.” This concept is quite important for considering the human like intelligence in our physical world because human intelligence cannot be described by means of physical symbol system hypothesis.	Survey of the meaning of “embodiment”	15minutes
9.	Robots without physical body: Introducing recent academic trials to realize robots or characters in virtual world. Discussing the substantial differences between these virtual robots and “physical” robots will clarify what the robots are or what humans expect for robots.	Survey of virtual agents	15minutes
10.	Hypothesis testing with using robot: Introducing an alternative usage of the robot as “hypothesis testing.” The concept of “robot as computer with physical body” will help to understand this alternative usage. Specifically, introducing some constructivist approaches in research area of cognitive development.	Survey of cognitive science	15minutes
11.	Appearance and design of robots: Introducing current findings of the importance of the appearance of the robot and the concrete design methodologies. And introducing an importance of the relationship between the robots’ appearance designs and their actual functions.	Survey of design methodology of robots	15minutes
12.	Robot psychology: Introducing recent research trends called “robot psychology” which is focusing on the interaction between robots and humans especially from the viewpoints of human users. And introducing several recent studies presented on ACM/IEEE human-robot interaction conference.	Survey of the academic conference on “human-robot interaction”	15minutes
13.	Useless robots: Introducing a concept of “useless robots.” Although the useless robots cannot achieve their goals by themselves, these robots can achieve these together with humans. Rethinking about human’s reactions toward these useless robots will lead an alternative understanding about what robots are.	Survey of the concept of “benefit of inconvenience”	15minutes
14.	Moral and robots: Moral norms determine human’s basic attitudes toward the robots in quite fundamental way. Introducing recent moral dilemma tasks to investigate how humans regards these robots are. At a glance, the concept of “moral norms” are quite far from robotics, however this concept can clearly reveal what robots are.	Survey of morals and ethics	15minutes
Total.	-	-	210minutes

	Assignments	Final report	Total.
1.	30%	70%	100%
2.			0%
Total.	30%	70%	-