“Unity” is one of the powerful word, which solves most of the world’s social, political and economic problems. Pure form of unity exists in some insect, animal and bird groups. Luckily some form of unity still in the human society too, even though it is not pure.
Anyway in this article we will see about the unity among the different technical fields and different engineering streams.
At the college level, there are many unfortunate clashes and quarrels happening between different department students and as well as different department staffs. This article is to explain about the need of healthy interaction and unity between different departments of engineering field that will be results in greater and advanced technological developments.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such a field where the pure form of unity between different engineering fields makes the machines which not only just look like human and also think and behave like man. Making the machine to think based on the situation is one of the area in which world scientists are working deeply. This process of giving or feeding intelligence to the machine artificially is known as AI.
We will discuss one simple basic example of AI. There is a Cup of tea on the table in front of me. I can see that. My brain sense that it is a Cup of tea, then my hand move and take that cup of tea. This is one natural activity happened through my natural intelligence.
If we design one machine to do the same, then it comes under AI area. Now we will see how different engineering fields get united to accomplish this task.
While discussing this we also need to discuss how the human body system doing this process of taking a tea cup from the table.
Human see the tea cup first through his/her eyes. Eyes give the image of that object (tea cup) once the eye lens focuses that, but HOW???????
Electromagnetic Spectrum divided in to different segments starting from Gamma Ray to Radio Waves [Whose wave length is from 10^-12m to 10^3m]. In which the small spectrum segment from 0.4 x 10^-6m to 0.7 x 10^-6m is known as Visible Spectrum Band. Human eyes are sensible to Visible Spectrum radiation only.
The visible spectrum rays (visible light) fall on the object (tea cup). The light rays get reflected from the tea cup. The amount of light reflects is purely depending upon the color of the Cup. This reflection will reach the human eye. The lens of the eye control by the muscles which flatten or focus the lens naturally based on the object distance. Once the lens focuses the object, the reflected light from that object falls on the eye screen Retina which is behind the lens. Pattern vision of tea cup is afforded by the distribution of discrete light receptors over the surface of Retina.
Two different kind of receptors are there in the Retina which are known as Cones and Rods. The 6 to 7 million Cones are responsible for color sensing and 75 to 150 million Rods give the overall Picture of the Object (Tea cup).
The first task is to design an Eye system artificially. Optical Physics and mechanical Engineers developed some lenses which can be automatically focus and zoom by some mechanical relay movement and sensors. This lenses act same as human eye lens, but some chemical films are doing the job of Retina. The machine eye is nothing but a kind of Digi Cam.
Once the image captured, then it need to be process. Once the human eye see the tea cup, the brain process that visual and understood that it is a tea cup. We need to develop some system to do this image processing artificially. Engineers worked on this and they developed one separate field known as “DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING”. Our brain naturally understood the image as tea cup while the eyes seeing that, but artificially the real time tea cup image from the artificial eye system need to be stored in some memory and then it need to be compare with other images which are already stored in the database memory. The mathematical concepts like Fourier Transform, FFT, DCT, IFT and Probability techniques used for this image processing.
All this comparing, sensing, controlling and commanding operations carried out by a “brain” naturally, but while implementing this task artificially, we need a “Computer” which process and control all the tasks.
Naturally once brain gets the visual, it forces the hand to move and grab the tea cup by the fingers. Artificially one need to design a mechanical hand with finger structure to carried out this.
Medical Science saying that totally 29 major and minor bones, 29 joints, 34 muscles and 48 named nerves are there in the hand. These muscles and joints make the hands and fingers move smoothly, so the next task is to make the mechanical machine hand and fingers. Mechanical engineers playing a key role in designing and manufacturing these joints and movable parts. Some driving force is required to move this mechanical hand and fingers. Electrical drives such as Stepper motor, DC motor or any other special motors used for moving the mechanical parts. For some simple movement simple electromagnetic relays also used. Electrical Engineers playing a vital role in designing this motors and relays based on the application. The smoothness of the movement is depends upon the number of joints and the kind of motors used to drive the mechanical parts.
As we know our human hand is controlled by brain, this machine hand controlled by a Computer. Once the computer get the visual from the Robo’s eye cam, it will process that visual image with its database images and after comparing it will find that the object is tea cup and then it will sends the signal to mechanical hand system to grab that cup. So the interconnection and data transfer between the eye cam to computer and Computer to mechanical hand system need to be properly design. Engineers developed many interconnection topologies for making this communication better.
If the interconnection need to be carried out in wireless manner means then the contribution from communication engineers to design transmitters and receivers plays a big role, but mostly wireless system used in the application where the processing and controlling computer system is reasonable away from real action field.
After many engineering fields and technology mingles as discussed above, the wonderful machine developed that can act as a Human, but AI field is not limited with this. As Humans we can taste the tea, but machine can’t. But the new Era of AI is keenly working on making the machine to understand the senses also, like smell, taste, facial expressions etc.,. Many new advanced inventions in Biological area like creation of artificial genes and hormones make the AI area to grow more efficiently.
We discussed how the unity and interaction between different engineering fields producing advanced technical inventions and innovations. The unity of engineering fields is nothing but a unity among different field of engineers. This unity and interaction should start from college level itself between the different department students.
Humanity is nothing but a Unity of Man, hope all we are humans: P. Always be united only on the basis of all we are the creatures on this beautiful world.
