Robots cleaning up the mess

Robot WALL-E's whole purpose in life was to clean up our mess. It turns out, lots of real robots already have WALL-E's job

One gang of robots is cleaning up the radioactive leftovers from a nuclear power station called Dounreay. Thousands of metal tubes filled with radioactive waste have to be moved to be cleaned. This is where the robots come in. People don't want to go anywhere near them.

Mostly armless

Suppose you want your robot's gripper to move to one of the tubes and pick it up. You could move the gripper with a joystick yourself watching what the robot does by video link. That is how simple robots work - by remote control. It would be far better if the robot could work out how to do it on its own. Smarter robots that are able to act on their own are called 'autonomous'. How does that work?

Imagine you're inside a nuclear reactor but your arm is in a plaster cast (that was a nasty accident!). You have to grip one of those radioactive tubes. There are things in the way and your arm can't bend. It's going to be tough. Yipes, problems!

Now imagine the cast is off. Getting your hand to the right place is oh so much easier. The elbow bends again, your wrist rotates, and things in the way are no problem. The more ways your arm joints can move the easier it is. That's why robots used in tight spaces like reactors have motors that allow the arm to bend and turn like a human's elbows, shoulder and wrist. Some have even more ways to move than us to make it even easier.

On the spot

Touch this full stop (.) with your finger. Your brain just worked out how to get your finger there given all the ways your arm could have moved. Your brain did lots of computation to work out how to do it (bet you didn't know your brain was such a whizz at maths!) Autonomous robots have rigid steel 'bones' and electric motor 'muscles', but the calculation is the same. Engineers have to write programs that work it out for the robots just like your brain does for you.

The more autonomous robots become the more jobs they can help us with - not just in reactors but hazardous places like under the sea or like WALL-E taking trips in outer space.