Elenco Robotics - Manual (Page 3)

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How do these Robots " think " ? Everyone has 5 basic senses; you see with your eyes, taste with your tongue, hear with your ears,
smell with your nose, and feel with the skin on your fingers.
The information that you get from any of these 5 " sensors " is transmitted
to your brain, the brain processes the information and the muscles in your body react.
Let's say you go out in the bright sun, what happens?
You immediately start to squint or shut your eyes completely.
A robot is programmed to operate in the same way, it receives
information and reacts accordingly.
The simple robot will receive information from the sensor and
will react immediately.
As an example; we will use the robot that moves forward until it meets
an object in its way. It receives the information and stops.
We call this an open loop system: it works on the basis of receiving
information and reacting.
A more complicated robot could do the following; it receives information
that there is an object in its way; it stops and now it can be programmed
to reverse, turn to the left, and try to go forward again.
If the object in the way is small, it can now go forward, but if the object
is large it will have to reverse and turn further to the left until such time
that it will not meet the object when it goes forward.
This robot works on what is called a closed loop system.
It receives information, compares it with what it has been programmed
to do, acts, and waits to receive further information before acting again.
To use the same example of the sun in your eyes.
You go out in the bright sun, and you immediately squint,
your brain now analyses the information and decides how you react,
for example by raising your hand over your eyes to act as a shade or you put on sunglasses.
Input
Process
Output