Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

terminal 475and they are not yet widely used for meetings. RodneyBrooks, director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,foresees a not very distant future in which such robotswill be commonplace.The robot will have considerable built-in capabilities,so the person who has “roboted in” to it won’t need toworry about the mechanics of walking, avoiding obstacles,or focusing vision on particular objects. Seeing and actingthrough the robot, the person will be able to move aroundan environment as freely as persons who are physically present.The operator can give general commands amounting to“walk over there” or “pick up this object” or perform moredelicate manipulations by using his or her hands to manipulategloves connected to a force-feedback mechanism.Brooks sees numerous applications for robotic telepresence.For example, someone at work could “robot in” to hisor her household robot and do things such as checking tomake sure appliances are on or off, respond to a burglaralarm, or even refill the cat’s food dish. Robotic telepresencecould also be used to bring expertise (such as that of asurgeon) to any site around the world without the time andexpense of physical travel. Indeed, robots may be the onlyway (for the foreseeable future) that humans are likely toexplore environments far beyond Earth (see space explorationand computers).Further ReadingBallantyne, Garth H., Jacques Marescaux, and Pier Cristoforo Giulianotti.The Primer of Robotic and Telerobotic Surgery: A BasicGuide to Heart Disease. 4th ed. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams& Wilkins, 2004.Frere, Manuel, et al., eds. Advances in Telerobotics. New York:Springer, 2007.Goldberg, Ken, ed. The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemologyin the Age of the Internet. Cambridge, Mass.: MITPress, 2000.NASA Space Telerobotics Program. Available online. URL: http://ranier.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_page/telerobotics.shtm.Accessed August 22, 2007.Sheppard, P. J., and G. R. Walker, eds. Telepresence. New York:Springer, 1998.Tele-Robotics Links [Online robots, etc.]. Available online. URL:http://queue.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/art/teleroboticslinks.html.Accessed August 22, 2007.templateThe term template is used in a several contexts in computing,but they all refer to a general pattern that can be customizedto create particular products such as documents.In a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, atemplate (sometimes called a style sheet) is a document thatcomes with a particular set of styles for various elementssuch as titles, headings, first and subsequent paragraphs,lists, and so on. Each style in turn consists of various characteristicssuch as type font, type style (such as bold), andspacing. The template also includes properties of the documentas a whole, such as margins, header, and footer.To create a new document, the user can select one ofseveral built-in templates for different types of documentssuch as letters, faxes, and reports, or design a custom templateby defining appropriate styles and properties. Specialsequences of programmed actions can also be attached to atemplate (see macro).Templates can be created and used for applications otherthan word processing. A spreadsheet template consists ofappropriate macros and formulas in an otherwise blankspreadsheet. When it is run, the template prompts the userto enter the appropriate values and then the calculationsare performed. A database program can have input formsthat serve in effect as templates for creating new records byinputting the necessary data.Class TemplatesSome programming languages use the term template to referto an abstract definition that can be used to create a varietyof similar classes for handling different types of data, whichin turn are used to create actual objects. For example, oncethe programmer defines the following template:templateANY_TYPE maximum(ANY_TYPE a, ANY_TYPE b){return (a > b) ? a : b;This template provides any class with the maximumfunction, which can compare any two objects of that classand return the larger one. (See c++, class, and objectorientedprogramming.)Further ReadingAbrams, David, and Aleksey Gurtovoy. C++ Template Metaprogramming:Concepts, Tools, and Techniques from Boost andBeyond. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Addison-Wesley Professional,2004.Free Templates for Work, Home, and Play. Microsoft Office Online.Available online. URL: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/FX100595491033.aspx.Accessed August 22, 2007.“Introduction to the Standard Template Library” [for C++]. SGI.Available online. URL: http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/stl_introduction.html.Accessed August 22, 2007.Krieger, Stephanie. Advanced Microsoft Office Documents Inside Out.2007 ed. Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, 2007.Vandevoorde, David, and Nicolai M. Josuttis. C++ Templates: The CompleteGuide. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Addison-Wesley, 2002.Utvich, Michael, Ken Milhous, and Yana Beylinson. 1 Hour WebSite: 120 Professional Templates and Skins. Hoboken, N.J.:Wiley, 2006.Walkenbach, John. Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Bible. Indianapolis:Wiley, 2007.terminalThroughout the 1950s, operators interacted with computersprimarily by punching instructions onto cards that werethen fed into the machine (see punched cards and papertape). Although this noninteractive batch processing procedurewould continue to be used with mainframe computersduring the next two decades, another way to use computersbegan to be seen in the 1960s.With the beginning of time-sharing computer systems,several users could run programs on the computer at thesame time. The users communicated with the machine by