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Bots /The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Meeting the Palm Robot 3

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics
Most sci-fi fans are familiar with Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics.
Designed as a simple narrative device to help tell the story of a robot on
trial for killing a human, the three laws have become an essential part of
the science fiction landscape, co-opted by dozens of writers, television
shows, and movies.
The laws made their first appearance in Asimov’s classic 1942 story
Runaround, and were later incorporated into a series of robot-centric
stories and novels. Here are the three laws as Asimov first wrote them:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except
where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The Essence of a Robot
Even though robots vary dramatically in appearance, you can generally char-
acterize them as being made of four key components:

❏ Base The base is the body of the robot. In our Palm Robot, the
base is a simple metal chassis on which the wheels, motors, and
Palm PDA itself are mounted. Not all robot bodies need to support
motion, but ours will.
❏ Processor Our processor will be a Palm OS PDA. Most
Palm-powered PDAs use a Motorola DragonBall processor,
so that’s the heart of our bot.
❏ Actuators Actuators are the muscles that make your robot
interact with its environment. We’ll use a trio of motors to
power the wheels that make the Palm Robot roll.
❏ Sensors Sensors are the eyes, ears, and nose of the robot.
Not all robots have sensors; if a robot is sufficiently simple, it
doesn’t need to measure its environment in order to carry out

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