Ed Huntress wrote:
"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Bob Engelhardt wrote:
Wes wrote:
This is semantics, of course. My main problem with calling CNC machines
"robots" is then what do you call an autonomous machine?

Bob

The Japanese use the word robot for any semi-intelligent machine.

It doesn't have to walk around, drink cervesa and smoke cigars like
Bender.

The word robot is from the Czech word robota, implying slave labor.

Back in the late '70s, when the world was ga-ga over the enormous number of
"robots" the Japanese claimed to be using in industry (the number, IIRC, was
55,000), we became the "emporer has no clothes" voice at _American
Machinist_ by pointing out that the vast majority of them were
pick-and-place loaders that, basically, went in and out. g

They have a loose definition of the word. But, in industry, autonomous
robots hardly exist. Many of the loaders were cam-operated. Most today are
multi-axis programmable, but not autonomous.



Exactly!
But by the Czech standard, even cam operated machines could techically
be called robots... Machine slave labor.

The only "real" robots (by Rich's definition) are lab curiosities.


--

Richard Lamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~capri26