In the middle of the 20th century, specialized robot sensors were born, which was the first time that a collection of robots and sensors appeared in people's vision. Visual sensors are first applied to robots, paired with a visual system processor, to complete tasks such as image acquisition, image collection, image processing, and image understanding for robots. After 1970, the Hitachi Manufacturing Institute of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and IBM developed force sensors for fingers, joints, wrists, etc., and constructed a force sensing system as a supplement to the visual system. Since then, the development of robots and sensors has become inseparable.
Chips help robots make rapid progress
In 1946, when the world's first computer was born, it was still a giant that needed 18000 electronic tubes, covered an area of 170 square meters, weighed 30 tons, consumed about 150 kilowatts of power, and could perform only 5000 calculations per second. Today, 70 years later, mobile phone processors with a 4nm process of 3.2 GHz are no longer new. The various high-precision sensors that cover the entire body of a robot will bring more data to the robot's brain. However, thanks to the rapid development of computer chips and the improvement of the computing power of the robot, the robot can easily cope with such a huge data processing problem. The development of computer chips not only makes robots more capable of processing data, but also allows more sophisticated control programs to run on robots, allowing them to complete more difficult actions.
Sensors also have cross-border applications
The progress of sensors has benefited many other fields. In the past, people did not know how to protect nature, resulting in irreversible damage to nature. For example, the famous foggy capital of London, affected by a large amount of coal combustion, is still unable to repair the environment that was once damaged; The greenhouse effect, which has been frequently mentioned in recent years, is also caused by uncontrolled human emissions that destroy the ozone layer in the atmosphere. Today, with high-precision sensors, environmental protection departments can more directly read emission data, strictly monitor various emissions of enterprises and society, accurately calculate controllable emission ranges, and adjust relevant emission policies. For example, the popular concept of "carbon neutrality" in recent years, how to achieve carbon neutrality, and whether to achieve carbon neutrality, are concrete data that require the help of sensors to make accurate judgments.
The two complement each other and cannot be neglected
In fact, robots and sensors are closely connected as a whole. A robot is like a human body, responsible for receiving and executing instructions from the brain; Sensors are like human eyes, responsible for recognizing the external environment and judging whether the execution of the torso is safe and in place. An excellent robot product requires not only a flexible torso and bright eyes, but also a smart mind and sufficient energy; And accurate sensors, if not well used on excellent robots, are also considered to be lacking in talent. The future development of robots is not only the development of sensors, but also the development of computing power, energy supply, and materials. With the iterative updating of sensors and chips, robots will definitely be given more creativity in the future!