How Robots Work
According to author Tom Harris in his article "How Robots Work" as humans we have five major components. We have a body structure, a muscle system to move ourselves, a brain, a power source and a sensory system. Robots as well have this major components. Robots have a movable physical structure which will be the body. They have a motor the helps it move, this will be like the muscle system. Robots have a computer that contains all the instructions and program of what the robot should do, this would be the brain. They also have power supply such as electricity and this is like the robot's food. And lastly robots have a sensory system just like humans do. In figure one we can see with the example of the Sony AIBO robot to see these five components. We can see the actual body of the dog and all the sensors that the robot has. It has a head, chin, acceleration, and back sensor. Sensors help robots give it like a sense of touch and know when to stop or start moving. Inside there's like a motor that the robot has and this motor does all the movement. Without a motor robots can not move. We can also see that the AIBO robot has a Lithium ion battery which provides the electricity and energy for it to move. Batteries or power sources are necessary for a robot to transmit it's movements from the computer to each part of the body. Lastly the most important part of the robot it's the brain, in this case PC card slot. The PC card slot contains all the code of it's program. The code tells the robot what to do. In order for robots to one day dominate the world and act just like humans they need a conscious brain or PC card slot. In the following section we will explain how a robot's brain works and why it's very hard for it to become self-aware.