Other disciplines contributing to robotics include electrical, control, software, information, electronic, telecommunication, computer, mechatronic, and materials engineering.

Due to the resultant lower reflected inertia, series elastic actuation improves safety when a robot interacts with the environment (e.g., humans or workpieces) or during collisions.

[23] One recent study has derived the necessary and sufficient passivity conditions for one of the most common impedance control architectures, namely velocity-sourced SEA.

[24] This work is of particular importance as it drives the non-conservative passivity bounds in an SEA scheme for the first time which allows a larger selection of control gains.

These work on a fundamentally different principle, whereby tiny piezoceramic elements, vibrating many thousands of times per second, cause linear or rotary motion.

Scientists from several European countries and Israel developed a prosthetic hand in 2009, called SmartHand, which functions like a real one —allowing patients to write with it, type on a keyboard, play piano, and perform other fine movements.

This information is then processed to be stored or transmitted and to calculate the appropriate signals to the actuators (motors), which move the mechanical structure to achieve the required co-ordinated motion or force actions.

Techniques from control theory are generally used to convert the higher-level tasks into individual commands that drive the actuators, most often using kinematic and dynamic models of the mechanical structure.

Modern commercial robotic control systems are highly complex, integrate multiple sensors and effectors, have many interacting degrees-of-freedom (DOF) and require operator interfaces, programming tools and real-time capabilities.

[52] When implemented in real-time, such techniques can potentially improve the stability and performance of robots operating in unknown or uncertain environments by enabling the control systems to learn and adapt to environmental changes.

Funded by DARPA, NASA, the United States Air Force, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute and patented by Prof. Robert C. Michelson for covert terrestrial missions as well as flight in the lower Mars atmosphere, the Entomopter flight propulsion system uses low Reynolds number wings similar to those of the hawk moth (Manduca sexta), but flaps them in a non-traditional "opposed x-wing fashion" while "blowing" the surface to enhance lift based on the Coandă effect as well as to control vehicle attitude and direction.

Waste gas from the propulsion system not only facilitates the blown wing aerodynamics, but also serves to create ultrasonic emissions like that of a Bat for obstacle avoidance.

Mimicking the way real snakes move, these robots can navigate very confined spaces, meaning they may one day be used to search for people trapped in collapsed buildings.

One approach mimics the movements of a human climber on a wall with protrusions; adjusting the center of mass and moving each limb in turn to gain leverage.

[107] China's Technology Daily reported on 15 November 2008, that Li Hiu Yeung and his research group of New Concept Aircraft (Zhuhai) Co., Ltd. had successfully developed a bionic gecko robot named "Speedy Freelander".

If robots are to work effectively in homes and other non-industrial environments, the way they are instructed to perform their jobs, and especially how they will be told to stop will be of critical importance.

Science fiction authors also typically assume that robots will eventually be capable of communicating with humans through speech, gestures, and facial expressions, rather than a command-line interface.

[121] Interpreting the continuous flow of sounds coming from a human, in real time, is a difficult task for a computer, mostly because of the great variability of speech.

[123] Nevertheless, great strides have been made in the field since Davis, Biddulph, and Balashek designed the first "voice input system" which recognized "ten digits spoken by a single user with 100% accuracy" in 1952.

Likewise, robots like Kismet and the more recent addition, Nexi[134] can produce a range of facial expressions, allowing it to have meaningful social exchanges with humans.

As can be seen from the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the programming of these artificial emotions is complex and requires a large amount of human observation.

[139] Nevertheless, researchers are trying to create robots which appear to have a personality:[140][141] i.e. they use sounds, facial expressions, and body language to try to convey an internal state, which may be joy, sadness, or fear.

Once all relevant positions, velocities, and accelerations have been calculated using kinematics, methods from the field of dynamics are used to study the effect of forces upon these movements.

Research includes legal and technical definitions; seeking out alternative tools and materials to reduce costs and simplify builds; and creating interfaces and standards for designs to work together.

[158] A discussion paper drawn up by EU-OSHA highlights how the spread of robotics presents both opportunities and challenges for occupational safety and health (OSH).

In the future, many other highly repetitive, risky or unpleasant tasks will be performed by robots in a variety of sectors like agriculture, construction, transport, healthcare, firefighting or cleaning services.

This need to combine optimal skills has resulted in collaborative robots and humans sharing a common workspace more closely and led to the development of new approaches and standards to guarantee the safety of the "man-robot merger".

For example, the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) organises annual workshops on the topic "human-robot collaboration".

Graduate degrees are typically joined by students coming from all of the contributing disciplines, and include familiarization of relevant undergraduate level subject matter from each of them, followed by specialist study in pure robotics topics which build upon them.

As an interdisciplinary subject, robotics graduate programmes tend to be especially reliant on students working and learning together and sharing their knowledge and skills from their home discipline first degrees.