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PENDANT: Device used to program an industrial robot. You push buttons to move the robot and set desired positions,
areas that should be avoided, and actions such as opening or closing the gripper. Pendants may look like game
controllers but using them definitely feels more like work than fun.
PLANT: Not the green stuff. In robotic parlance, it refers to a machine or process that you want to control.
PLC: Programmable logic controller. Rugged control systems generally used for industrial automation.
PNEUMATIC: A pneumatic actuator is powered by compressed air or other gases. See also “McKibben Muscle.”

PID: Proportional integral derivative controller. The PID is the workhorse of control systems, used in everything from
simple research robots to complex industrial machinery. If you program a robot to drive at 1 m/s, for example, the
PID will try to maintain that speed by countering any disturbances with three strategies: The proportional component
(P) makes corrections based on the error between the desired speed and the actual speed; the integral component
(I) makes corrections based on the accumulation of past errors; and the derivative component (D) makes corrections
based on how fast the error is changing. Tweak the P, I, and D parameters and you can almost always get a good
controller. See also “Control” and “Feedback.”
Q

QUADROTOR: Also called “quad” or “quadcopter,” a flying robot that uses four horizontal rotors for lift and control.
Simple, cheap, and robust, quadrotors come in a variety of sizes, and more powerful variations (using six, eight, or
more rotors) are also used.

R

RADAR: A sensor that determines the distance of an object by emitting radio waves and measuring the time that the
waves take to bounce off of the object and return. Autonomous vehicles and drones use radar to locate objects in their
surroundings and avoid crashing on them.
ROBOCUP: An international robotic soccer competition where researchers gather to play with their cool robots and,
as a result, advance the state-of-the-art in robotics and artificial intelligence.
ROBOETHICS: Research field that explores the ethical implications of robotics and attempts to prevent the
Robopocalypse. Focuses not only on how robots should act but also on how humans who design robots should act. See
also “Robopocalypse” and “Three Laws of Robotics.”

ROBOT: A machine that senses its environment, computes a decision based on a stored program, and performs an
action. That description, however, can also describe an automatic door, which most certainly is not a robot. A more
practical definition is, if you think something is a robot, you can almost always call it a robot.

ROBOPOCALYPSE: The coming robot apocalypse. Results from a robot uprising that ends the world as we know it.
Also, a novel about a robot uprising that ends the world as we know it. And a future Spielberg movie about a robot
uprising that ends the world as we know it. See also “Three Laws of Robotics” and “Roboethics.”

ROS: Robot Operating System. An open-source software platform used to give robots a variety of capabilities, including
vision, navigation, and manipulation. Popular among researchers, ROS provides operating system-like functionality
and is flexible and robust. A doctorate degree in robotics is not required to use ROS, but it helps.

S

SCARA: Selective compliant assembly robot arm. A robot arm with 4 degrees of freedom, typically used in industrial
automation.
SEMANTICS: The relationships between things. Robots use what’s called “semantic mapping” to relate objects to each
other; for example, the knowledge that cheese is food, and that Twinkies are also food, and that cheese and Twinkies
go really well together would be a simple (but rather unpleasant tasting) semantic map.

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