Page 3 - Modelling Things

ICT Grade 8 2019/2020

Based on the answers that the model gives, the managers of the business can make decisions.

Spreadsheets are often used to model the financial systems of a business.

Training Pilots to Fly an Airplane
Trainee pilots have many hours of lessons in flight simulators before being allowed to fly a real
airplane.

Flight simulators behave almost exactly like real airplanes since they are controlled by a computer with
a very accurate and realistic model of the airplane. The main difference is that the simulator can’t
actually crash!

Pilots can make mistakes without putting anyone‟s life at risk.

Flight simulators can provide a pilot with any number of highly realistic flying situations: storms,
engine failures, low cloud hiding the runway, etc.

The experience that pilots gain whilst using the simulator means that when they eventually start flying
real airplanes, they already have many of the required skills.

Robotics

Robots are used in many areas of manufacturing, from heavy work right through to
delicate operations. Examples include paint spraying of car bodies, welding
bodywork on cars, manufacturing of microchips, manufacturing electrical goods and
automatic warehouses.
Control of robots is either through embedded microprocessors (see Section
7.3) or linked to a computer system. Programming of the robot to do a task is
generally done in one of two ways:
● The robot is programmed with a sequence of instructions which allow it to
carry out a series of tasks (e.g. spraying a car body with paint).
● Alternatively, a human operator manually carries out a series of tasks and how
each task is done is relayed back to the robot (embedded processor) or
controlling computer. The sequence of instructions is remembered so that the
robot can automatically carry out each task identically each time (e.g.
assembling parts in a television).

Robots are often equipped with sensors so they can gather important information
about their surroundings. Sensors also prevent them from doing „stupid things‟, such
as stopping a robot spraying a car if no car is present, or stopping the spraying
operation if the supply of paint has run out, etc.
Robots are very good at repetitive tasks. However, if there are many
different tasks (e.g. making specialist glassware for some scientific work) then it
is often better to still use human operators.

3 Dr.Nasser Ahmed