Island 6 LEGO The Basics
Robotics and Control Technology
How Do Robots Work?
Robots are electro-mechanical machines that are programmed to do a job. That means they are made from a blend of electronic and mechanical parts and require computer code to function.
Mechanical engineers design and build robots to move a certain way in order to do a job. The way a robot looks and behaves depends on the task it is given. Robots that assist in surgeries will look different than robots that dispense medication.
Robots with different tasks will also use different electronic systems. They often use sensors to collect information from the environment and then carry out specialized instructions based on what is detected or found. Programming refers to the software instructions that define the tasks a robot will perform and how it will interpret and respond to sensory information.
LEGO The Basics
Will robots take over the world? Probably not anytime soon. We still need humans to make robots work.
One of the responsibilities of a computer programmer is to write the code, or set of instructions, that tells the robot what to do.