Thursday, July 19, 2007

2. Historical Perspectives of Robotics

a. When was the first actual robot invented and used ?
The first actual robot was a paint spraying mechanism and was invented by Willard Pollard and Harold Roselund in 1938 for the company, DeVilbiss.

b. In 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov created a set of three imaginary Laws of Robotics. What was the name of the book Asimov wrote in 1942 in which he described the Laws of Robotics?
The book Isaac Asimov wrote in 1942 in which he presented the Three Laws of Robotics was called Runaround.

The three laws are:
1.A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

c. What is the so-called "Zeroth Law of Robotics? Why is it called the Zeroth Law?
The Zeroth Law of Robotics is: "A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm".It is called the Zeroth Law in order to keep the pattern of lower numbered laws being more important than higher numbered laws.


d. Propose one situation where it would be OK for a robot to harm (even kill) a human. Explain why it would be OK in this circumstance.
It would be alrdight for a robot to harm (or even kill) a human been in the instance of a situation were a robot may have to kill a person in order to save lots of lifes. An example of this would be a suicide bombing if a robot could detect a person a bomb in time it would be ok for it to harm or kill the person before he endangers many more lives, therfore the robot may take one life but to save many more innocent lives.

Refrences:
http://fusionanomaly.net/threelawsofrobotics.html
http://www.trueforce.com/Articles/Robot_History.htm

No comments: