Automated and Emerging Technologies · 4 question types
Past paper frequency (2018 to 2024)
This topic accounts for approximately 3% of your exam marks.
Advantages/disadvantages of using robots in industry are the typical question format.
A robot is built from the same components covered in topic 15 (automated systems), with one extra category specific to robotics: the end-effector.
Sensors are the robot's input devices, measuring the environment so the robot knows what is around it.
Typical sensors on a robot:
The microprocessor is the robot's brain. It reads the sensor inputs, runs the program, and decides what each actuator should do next.
Modern robots may use a single microcontroller for simple tasks or a network of processors with onboard AI accelerators for complex perception and decision-making.
Actuators turn the microprocessor's electrical signals into physical motion.
Common actuators in robots:
An end-effector is the tool or hand at the end of a robot arm: the part that actually interacts with the world.
Examples of end-effectors:
The same robot arm can often swap between different end-effectors to do different jobs, which is part of why a single industrial robot can be reprogrammed for many tasks.
The data flow inside a robot is the same closed-loop pattern as any automated system:
sensors → microprocessor → actuators (turning end-effectors) → environment changes → sensors read again
The environment changes because the end-effector did something; the sensor picks up that change on the next reading; the microprocessor decides what to do next. The cycle repeats many times a second.