Question: have you ever used pythagoras theorem

Giuseppe Cotugno answered on 10 Jan 2020:

I use Pythagoras theorem all the time, both in its classical algebraic form, in its trigonometric form and even other related theorems like law of cosines. Pythagoras theorem is very important in robotics: you find it everywhere because robot arms (one of the first robots ever used) are made of links and joints which rotate against each other. If you want to find out where the hand of the robot is you will likely need to use Pythagoras.

A use I made of it more recently was to create a mathematical model to describe how a robot hand should approach a object to grasp it. I wanted to make this model general and applicable to any hand, so I used Pythagoras to work out how I can express the angles (azimuth and zenith) that the robot hand should have when approaching the object as a function of its 3D position in space. Once I have this formula then I can play around with it and add on top another model which describes all the possible ways of approaching the object as if the object would be a magnet attracting the hand of the robot.

Without Pythagoras’ theorem I would not be able to have those models to play with.