Robotics for Children – 3

Well, the future is robotics – right from Agriculture to Space Exploration. Today, robots have already started showing their presence in various fields in various forms. This week we shall see some of the Wheeled and Flying robots in action in the real-world!

Self-Driving Car: Many famous companies are into the research of Self-driving cars. This is Google’s Self driving robot. You should know that the automated car is also a robot, since it’s also a machine that does some movement to perform a set of actions. But this is not just a simple car - It drives by itself, takes you to the location wherever you want, it puts on an indicator, it turns by itself, it stops when there is a car in front of it. It also parks itself properly.

Robot Vacuum Cleaner: This robot is by the company called iRobot. It’s called the 'roomba'. It has wheels on its inside and has brushes that go about cleaning your floors. It also goes automatically to the charging dock when its battery is empty.

All-terrain Robot: This robot is called an 'All-terrain Robot' which means in can move on any terrain - sloppy ones, stones, mud, grease etc. The Sand-Flea by I-Robot has four wheels just like your car, but does some amazing work. This is specially designed for military purposes, to go to some place and then spy there! Just imagine how light the structure of the robot should be and also how strong it should be, so that it does not break, but at the same time, be able to jump at such heights !

Quadrotor/ Multi-rotor: These are flying robots generally called 'drones'. If it has four blades that keep rotating, they are called quadrotors. If it has more than four, they are generally called as multi-rotors or multi-copters. These have varied applications such as agriculture, delivery of parcels, taking photographs from heights !

Ornithopter: We saw a flying robot that has blades on all sides right? Now, there are other types of flying robots too. This is a bird type robot which has wings and flaps it about to fly around. This is technically called as orni-thopter. Obviously, this does not have the speed of a quad-rotor but still it’s amazing !