Requirements for Task 1: 

 Prepare a 200- to 300-word history about the National Critical Technology (NCT) technical application your team has selected to solve a local or national problem.

 Task 1:

 The history of Robots dates back to the Greek era.  The physicist named Ctesibus invented a water clock that would keep time.  Others created steam-powered birds that may have been actually capable of flight. After this automatons seem to fade into the background for several hundred years. Leonardo DaVinci created an artificial knight that would act as though its armor contained a man, and would walk around independently. In the eighteenth century, an inventor named Vaucanson created several robots. One that would play a dozen songs on a flute, another that would play flute and a drum or a tambourine, and a third that was a duck. The duck was capable of many degrees of movement; it could quack, flap its wings, and even eat. Soon after, a Swiss clock maker created a set of three dolls that would write, play music, and draw, respectively. These were made for royalty as entertainment. At the beginning of the 19^th Century, Joseph Jacquard creates an automated loom that was controlled with a punch-card. This is the basis of Binary Code used in computers. In 1893 Dr. Achibald Campion built an artificial soldier prototype. Over the following years many developments were made increasing the technology.  Many of these were robotic arms that would do certain tasks. In 1973, a robot called WABOT 1 that had the mental capacity of about an 18 month old child. From there until current years improvements were made, increasing capacity of robots, decreasing their size, and giving them more capabilities in general. Toy robots begin to be developed in the 90’s. One of the most recent developments is a project by Honda, ASIMO. ASIMO is designed as a personal assistant and can recognize its owner’s face, voice, and name.

Requirements for Task 2:

Cite Three Detailed Examples of research done in the past 3 - 5 years which focused on the topic your team has selected.

 >The funding agency

 >The principal investigator’s name

  >Institution where the research is or was being conducted

Task 2

  The first research example is done by the Carnegie Mellon National Robotics Engineering center. They developed an autonomous lawn mower that could navigate around a golf course, moving around objects in its path.

The sponsor was The Toro Company, http://www.thetorocompany.com/

No chief investigator

 The institution for this research is the National Robotics Engineering center at Carnegie Mellon University.

  http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/projects/toro/

Our second example is done by Virginia Tech. It is an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of doing unmanned tasks for either military, or domestic use, such as mapping terrain that changes frequently or surveillance, in a low cost, non-dangerous way.

 The project was done solely by Virginia Tech.

 The principle investigator for this project is Justin Murtha

 The institution for this project is the Virginia Center for Autonomous Systems

 http://www.unmanned.vt.edu/news/spaaros.html

Our third research source is from NASA. They put together a robot that would be able to be operated by a scientist in a location they could not access, or didn’t have enough time to complete all the tasks they would like to.

 The sponsor was NASA for this project.

 The principle investigator is Terry Fong

 The institution is the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

 http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/robots/2010/

 Requirements for Task 3:

  Based on the research your team has done, explain how the NCT application chosen has advanced scientific knowledge.

Task 3:

Our group’s category is Autonomous Robotic Devices.  Autonomous means that the robot is capable of functioning on its own and sustaining itself in its environment, without human interaction. This can be extremely beneficial. Quite a bit of research has been done with automatons in military applications. There are currently drones able to remotely or automatically fly and survey an area. Other research is being done for drone type robots that can do the work of humans that is dangerous or tedious, such as for example in car manufacturing plants. One example of a robot that interacts with humans while being autonomous is ASIMO, a robot designed by Honda to be a personal assistant. This could potentially eliminate need for some of the workforce that could then be transferred other places. This could also be used for space exploration or other exploration and work in hostile environments such as other planets. Another application is cars that can drive you themselves, which has research being done in smaller outlets, an example is a lawnmower that will cut the lawn while maneuvering around objects in its path.