Robotics and the chip

One of the most exciting areas of chip use is in the field of robotics, that is, the use of machines to perform work. Currently, robots are used extensively by the automobile industry to handle heavy, dirty, or dangerous tasks such as spot welding or materials handling. They are also used in the electronics industry to help build calculators, by performing the same precision task time after time. In each case, the robots that are being used are a far cry from the walking, talking C3PO robot of Star Wars fame. An industrial robot is little more than a mechan­ical arm controlled by a microprocessor chip to perform a specified set of tasks using instructions built into a ROM chip. While not very cute, these robots have had a big impact on the automobile industry; the Japanese companies have used them to gain an advantage over the more labor-intensive U.S. companies.

In robotics, chips direct the actions of a robot by sending the robot the instructions it needs to perform the desired actions. PROM (programmed ROM) chips are useful for this purpose because an individualized set of actions can be programmed into a chip. The chip converts the programming into directions for the robot. If a robot needs a new set of actions, the PROM chip can be replaced by a new PROM that contains the new instructions. One important fact to remember about the use of chips with robotics; A human must create the list of instructions for the chip before it can be used to direct the robot.

It is possible that robots will be used in such areas as hospital care, security, commercial cleaning, and support of elderly, infirm people. Handling these tasks will require "smart" robots, that is, robots that can see where they are going, note obstacles, and take action to avoid them. Another name for a smart robot that has a built-in microprocessor and is able to move around is android. A key problem that must be solved before androids will be widely used is that of three-dimensional sight. Without this, robots will not be able to move around in a crowded hospital hallway or a small apartment.

The importance of software

Software has been described as the "driving force" of computers and the "wiz­ard in the machine"; its importance to the use of computers cannot be mini­mized. Even though the hardware advances of the recent decade have been mind-boggling, the computer without software—without the instructions given it by the user or the manufacturer—would be nothing except a well-constructed combination of silicon chips and electronic circuitry. While there are only so many ways that chips and circuitry can be combined to build a computer, the number of different activities a computer can be instructed to perform by soft­ware is virtually limitless. The idea of a computer without software has been described as everything from a car without a driver to a camera without film. Any such analogy makes the point: Computer hardware must have software to direct it.

In 1990, worldwide sales of computer software were estimated to be over $80 billion, but it is expected that over $1 trillion of software will be sold annually by the year 2000. Because each software program must be created by one or more human programmers, not all software has decreased in price as hardware has. Programs that sold for around $500 when introduced in the mid-1980s still sell for that price or for even more.

Uses of software include just about every application imaginable—from playing games to running the family farm as discussed in the opening box. In this chapter, we will introduce the various types of software and the terminology involved in using software. Detailed discussions of the material introduced here are given in Block Three, Applications Software.