History of robots
Encyclopedia
The history of robot
s has its roots as far back as ancient myths and legends.
Modern concepts were begun to be developed when the Industrial Revolution allowed the use of more complex mechanics and the subsequent introduction of electricity made it possible to power machines with small compact motors. After the 1920s the modern formulation of a humanoid machine was developed to the stage where it was possible to envisage human sized robots with the capacity for near human thoughts and movements, first envisaged millennia before. The first uses of modern robots were in factories as industrial robots - simple fixed machines capable of manufacturing tasks which allowed production without the need for human assistance. Digitally controlled industrial robot
s and robots making use of artificial intelligence
have been built since the 1960s.
Chinese accounts relate a history of automata back to the 10th century BC when Yan Shi is credited with making an automaton resembling a human in an account from the Lie Zi
text.
Western and Eastern civilisations have concepts of artificial servants and companions with a long history. Many ancient mythologies include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants built by the Greek god Hephaestus
(Vulcan
to the Romans), the clay golem
s of Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend.
Likely fictional, the Iliad
illustrates the concept of robotics
by stating that the god Hephaestus
made talking mechanical handmaidens out of gold. Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum is reputed to have built a mechanical pigeon around 400 BC, possibly powered by steam, capable of flying. The clepsydra was made in 250 BC by Ctesibius of Alexandria, a physicist and inventor from Ptolemaic Egypt. Heron of Alexandria (10–70 AD) created programmable devices in the late 1st century AD, including one that allegedly could speak.
Aristotle
took up an earlier reference in Homer
's Iliad and speculated that automatons could someday bring about human equality by making the abolition of slavery possible in his book Politics (ca. 322 BC).
In ancient China, a curious account on automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou
(1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork.
Early water clocks
are sometimes grouped in with the beginning of robotics. They began in China in the 6th century BC and the Greco-Roman world in the 4th century BC where the Clepsydra is known to have been used as a stop-watch for imposing a time limit on clients' visits in Athenian
brothels.
The idea of artificial people in western mythology dates at least as far back as the ancient legends of Cadmus
, who sowed dragon teeth that turned into soldiers, and the myth of Pygmalion
, whose statue of Galatea
came to life. In Greek mythology
, the deformed god of metalwork (Vulcan
or Hephaestus
) created mechanical servants, ranging from intelligent, golden handmaidens to more utilitarian three-legged tables that could move about under their own power, and the bronze man Talos
defended Crete
.
Concepts akin to a robot can be found as long ago as the 4th century BC, when the Greek mathematician Archytas
of Tarentum postulated a mechanical bird he called "The Pigeon" which was propelled by steam
. Yet another early automaton
was the clepsydra
, made in 250 BC by Ctesibius
of Alexandria
, a physicist and inventor from Ptolemaic Egypt
. Hero of Alexandria
made numerous innovations in the field of automata, including one that allegedly could speak.
Taking up the earlier reference in Homer
's Iliad, Aristotle
speculated in his Politics (ca. 322 BC, book 1, part 4) that automatons could someday bring about human equality by making possible the abolition of slavery:
Hero of Alexandria
created numerous "programmable" automated devices, including one that allegedly could speak.
Jewish lore mentions the Jewish legend of the Golem
, a clay creature animated by Kabbalistic magic. Similarly, in the Younger Edda, Norse mythology
tells of a clay giant, Mökkurkálfi or Mistcalf, constructed to aid the troll Hrungnir in a duel with Thor
, the God of Thunder
.
The Cosmic Engine, a 10 metres (32.8 ft) clock tower built by Su Song
in Kaifeng, China
in 1088, featured mechanical mannequins that chimed the hours, ringing gongs or bells among other devices. Al-Jazari
(1136–1206), an Arab
Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty
, designed and constructed a number of automatic machines, including kitchen appliances, musical automata powered by water, and the first programmable
humanoid robot
in 1206. Al-Jazari's robot was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism
had a programmable drum machine with peg
s (cam
s) that bump into little lever
s that operate the percussion
. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations.
Interest in automata was either mostly non-existent in medieval Europe
, or unrecorded. Oriental automata did, however, find their way into the imaginary worlds of medieval literature. For instance, the Middle Dutch
tale Roman van Walewein ("The Romance of Walewein", early 13th century) describes mechanical birds and angels producing sound by means of systems of pipes.
One of the first recorded designs of a humanoid robot was made by Leonardo da Vinci
(1452–1519) in around 1495. Da Vinci's notebooks, rediscovered in the 1950s, contain detailed drawings of a mechanical knight
in armour which was able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. The design is likely to be based on his anatomical research recorded in the Vitruvian Man
but it is not known whether he attempted to build the robot (see: Leonardo's robot
).
's "Calculating Clock", Blaise Pascal
's "Pascaline", and the "Leibniz Stepped Drum
", by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In 1533, Johannes Müller von Königsberg created an automaton eagle and fly made of iron; both could fly. John Dee
is also famous for creating a wooden beetle, capable of flying.
Some of the most famous works of the period were created by Jacques de Vaucanson
in 1737, including an automaton flute player, tambourine player, and his most famous work, "The Digesting Duck
". Vaucanson's duck was powered by weights and was capable of imitating a real duck by flapping its wings (over 400 parts were in each of the wings alone), eat grain, digest it, and defecate by excreting matter stored in a hidden compartment.
John Kay
invented his "flying shuttle
" in 1733, and the "Spinning Jenny
" was invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves
, each radically increasing the speed of production in the weaving
and spinning
industries respectively. The Spinning Jenny is hand-powered and requires a skilled operator; Samuel Crompton
's Spinning Mule
first developed in 1779 is a fully automated power driven spinning machine capable of spinning hundreds of threads at once.
Richard Arkwright
built a water powered weaving machine, and factory around it in 1781, starting the Industrial Revolution
.
The Japanese craftsman Hisashige Tanaka
, known as "Japan's Edison", created an array of extremely complex mechanical toys, some of which were capable of serving tea, firing arrows drawn from a quiver, or even painting a Japanese kanji character. The landmark text Karakuri Zui (Illustrated Machinery) was published in 1796.
By 1800, cloth production was completely automated. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution the idea of automata began to be applied to industry, as cost and time saving devices.
Improvements in the weaving
industry had led to large amounts of automation, and the idea of programmable machines became popular with Charles Babbage
's Analytical Engine
Babbage conceived his Analytical Engine as a replacement for his uncompleted Difference Engine
; this larger, more complex device would be able to perform multiple operations, and would be operated by punch cards. Construction of the Analytical Engine was never completed; work was begun in 1833. However, Ada Lovelace
's work on the project has resulted in her being credited as the first computer programmer.
In 1837, the story of the Golem
of Prague, a humanoid artificial intelligence activated by inscribing Hebrew letters
on its forehead, based on George Boole
invented a new type of symbolic logic in 1847 which was instrumental to the creation of computers and robots.
In 1898 Nikola Tesla
publicly demonstrated a radio-controlled (teleoperated) boat, similar to a modern ROV. Based on his patents , and for "teleautomation", Tesla hoped to develop the wireless torpedo
into a weapon system
for the US Navy (Cheney 1989).
in his 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
. According to Karel, his brother Josef
was the actual inventor of the word "robot", creating the word from the Czech word "robota", meaning servitude. In 1927, Fritz Lang
's Metropolis
was released; the Maschinenmensch
("machine-human"), a gynoid
humanoid robot, also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix", or the "Maria impersonator" (played by German actress Brigitte Helm
), was the first robot ever to be depicted on film. The world's first actual robot, a humanoid named Televox operated through the telephone system, was constructed in the United States in 1927. In 1928, Makoto Nishimura produced Japan's first robot, Gakutensoku
.
In his 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
" (submitted on 28 May 1936), Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel
's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based formal language with what are now called Turing machine
s, formal and simple devices. He proved that some such machine would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm
, thus creating the basis for what is now called computer science
.
Many robots were constructed before the dawn of computer-controlled servomechanisms, for the public relations purposes of major firms. Electro appeared in Westinghouse's pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Some were built in between such major public gatherings, such as Garco, made by Garrett AiResearch
in the 1950s. These were essentially machines that could perform a few stunts, like the automatons of the 18th century.
Vannevar Bush
created the first differential analyzer
at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT)
. Known as the Differential Analyzer, the computer could solve differential equations. 1940 brought about the creation of two electrical computers, John Vincent Atanasoff
and Clifford Berry
's Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
.
Ultimately, ideas from ABC were stolen for ENIAC
.
In 1941 and 1942, Isaac Asimov
formulated the Three Laws of Robotics
, and in the process of doing so, coined the word "robotics".
In the UK, the Robinson machine was designed for the British war effort in cracking Enigma
messages. This was done at the British code-breaking establishment at Bletchley Park
; Ultra
is the name for the intelligence so received.
Robinson was superseded by Colossus, which was built in 1943 to decode FISH
messages by the British group Ultra; it was designed by Tommy Flowers
and was 100 to 1000 times faster than Robinson, and was the first fully electronic computer. The Bletchley machines were kept secret for decades, and so do not appear in histories of computing written until recently. After the war, Tommy Flowers joined the team that built the early Manchester computers.
In Germany, Konrad Zuse
built the first fully programmable digital computer in the world (the Z3) in 1941; it would later be destroyed in 1944. Zuse was also known for building the first binary computer from 1936 to 1938, called the Z1
; he also built the Z4
, his only machine to survive World War II.
The first American programmable computer was completed in 1944 by Howard Aiken
and Grace Hopper
. The Mark I
(as it was called) ran computations for the US Navy
until 1959. ENIAC
was built in 1946 and gained fame because of its reliability, speed, and versatility. John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly spent 3 years building ENIAC, which weighed over 60,000 lbs.
In 1948, Norbert Wiener
formulated the principles of cybernetics
, the basis of practical robotics.
The first Turtles
(Elmo and Elsie) were created by pioneer roboticist William Grey Walter
in 1949.
The first working digital computer to be sold was Zuse's Z4
in Germany; the fully electronic US BINAC
was sold twelve months earlier in September 1949 but it never worked reliably at the customer's site due to mishandling in transit. Second was the UK's Ferranti Mark 1 delivered in February 1951, the first software programmable digital electronic computer to be sold that worked upon delivery. It was based on the world's first software programmable digital electronic computer, Manchester's SSME of 1948.
In 1950, UNIVAC I
(also by Eckert and Mauchley) handled the US Census
results; it was the third commercially marketed computer that worked on delivery (in December 1951).
The Turing test
is proposed by Alan Turing
in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence
, which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"
invented the bipolar junction transistor
, announced at a press conference on July 4, 1951. Shockley obtained a patent for this invention on September 25, 1951. In 1951 a computer called LEO became operational in the UK. It was built by Lyons
for its own use: this was the world's first software programmable digital electronic computer for commercial applications, exploiting the US development of mercury delay line memory, and built with the support of the Cambridge EDSAC
project. LEO was used for commercial work running business application programs, the first of which was rolled out 17 November 1951.
Eckert and Mauchly completed EDVAC
in 1951. An improvement on ENIAC and UNIVAC, EDVAC used mercury delay lines
to store data, making it the USA's first software stored program computer. In 1952, the television network CBS
correctly predicted the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower
as president using UNIVAC. In 1952 IBM
announced its 701
model computer, marketed towards scientific use, it was designed by Nathaniel Rochester. Stanislaw Ulam and physicist Paul Stein converted MANIAC I
(used for solving calculations involved in creating the hydrogen bomb) to play a modified game of chess
in 1956; it was the first computer to beat a human in a game of chess. The term "Artificial Intelligence
was created at a conference held at Dartmouth College
in 1956. Allen Newell
, J. C. Shaw
, and Herbert Simon
pioneered the newly created artificial intelligence field with the Logic Theory Machine (1956), and the General Problem Solver
in 1957. In 1958, John McCarthy
and Marvin Minsky
started the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab with $50,000. John McCarthy also created LISP
in the summer of 1958, a programming language
still important in artificial intelligence research. Jack Kilby
and Robert Noyce
invented the integrated circuit
or "chip" in 1959; the inventors worked independent of each other. This development eventually revolutionized computers by affecting both the size and speed.
, the first industrial robot
ever created began work on the General Motors
assembly line in 1961; the machine was conceived in 1954 by George Devol
. Unimate was manufactured by Unimation. Unimate is remembered as the first industrial robot. In 1962 John McCarthy founded the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University
. The Rancho Arm was developed as a robotic arm to help handicapped patients at the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital
in Downey, California
; this computer controlled arm was bought by Stanford University in 1963. IBM announced its IBM System/360 in 1964. The system was heralded as being more powerful, faster, and more capable than its predecessors. In 1965, Gordon Moore
, a co-founder of Intel in 1968, develops what will become known as Moore's Law
; the idea that the number of components capable of being built onto a chip will double every two years. The same year, doctoral student Edward Feigenbaum
, geneticist and biochemist Joshua Lederberg
, and Bruce Buchanan (who held a degree in philosophy) begin work on the DENDRAL
, an expert system
designed to work in the field of organic chemistry
. Feigenbaum also founded the Heuristic Programming Project in 1965, it later became the Stanford Knowledge Systems Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The program Mac Hack was also written in 1966; it beat artificial intelligence critic Hubert Dreyfus
in a game of chess. The program was created by Richard Greenblatt
. Seymour Papert
created the Logo
programming language in 1967. It was designed as an educational programming language. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey
was released in 1968; the movie prominently features HAL 9000
, a malevolent artificial intelligence unit which controls a spacecraft. Marvin Minsky created the Tentacle Arm in 1968; the arm was computer controlled and its 12 joints were powered by hydraulics. Mechanical Engineering
student Victor Scheinman
created the Stanford Arm in 1969; the Stanford Arm is recognized as the first electronic computer controlled robotic arm (Unimate's instructions were stored on a magnetic drum). The first floppy disc was released in 1970. It measured eight inches in diameter and read-only
. The first mobile robot capable of reasoning about its surroundings, Shakey
was built in 1970 by the Stanford Research Institute. Shakey combined multiple sensor inputs, including TV cameras, laser rangefinders, and "bump sensors" to navigate.
In the winter of 1970, the Soviet Union explored the surface of the moon with the lunar vehicle Lunokhod 1
, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.
, called the 4004
was created by Ted Hoff at Intel in 1971. Measuring 1/8 of an inch by 1/16 of an inch, the chip itself was more powerful than ENIAC. Artificial intelligence critic Hubert Dreyfuss published his influential book "What Computers cannot Do" in 1972. Douglas Trumbull
's "Silent Running
" was released in 1972; the movie was notable for the three robot co-stars, named Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Released in 1973 was the logic based programming language PROLOG
; this logic based language becomes important in the field of artificial intelligence. Freddy
and Freddy II
, both built in the United Kingdom, were robots capable of assembling wooden blocks in a period of several hours. German based company KUKA
built the world's first industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes, known as FAMULUS. In 1974, David Silver designed The Silver Arm; the Silver Arm was capable of fine movements replicating human hands. Feedback was provided by touch and pressure
sensors and analyzed by a computer. MYCIN
, an expert system developed to study decisions and prescriptions relating to blood infections. MYCIN was written in Lisp. Marvin Minsky published his landmark paper "A Framework for Representing Knowledge" on artificial intelligence. By 1975, four expert systems relating to medicine had been created; PIP
, MYCIN, CASNET, and Internist. 1975: more than 5,000 computers were sold in the United States, and the first personal computer
was introduced. The Kurzweil Reading Machine (invented by Raymond Kurzweil
), intended to help the blind, was released in 1976. Capable of recognizing characters, the machine formulated pronunciation based on programmed rules. Based on studies of flexible objects in nature (such as elephant trunks and the vertebrae of snakes), Shigeo Hirose
designed the Soft Gripper in 1976 the gripper was capable of conforming to the object it was grasping. The knowledge based system Automated Mathematician
was presented by Douglas Lenat
in 1976 as part of his doctoral dissertation. Automated Mathematician began with a knowledge of 110 concepts and rediscovered many mathematical principles; Automated Mathematician was written in Lisp. Joseph Weizenbaum
(creator of ELIZA
, a program capable of simulating a Rogerian physcotherapist) published Computer Power and Human Reason
, presenting an argument against the creation of artificial intelligence. Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak created the Apple Computer
in 1977, and released the Apple II
. George Lucas'
movie Star Wars
was also released in 1977. Star Wars featured two robots; an android named C-3PO
and R2-D2
, both of which become iconic as robots. Voyagers 1
and 2
were launched in 1977 to explore the solar system. The 30 year old robotic space probes continue to transmit data back to earth and are approaching the heliopause and the interstellar medium
. The SCARA
, Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm, was created in 1978 as an efficient, 4-axis robotic arm. Best used for picking up parts and placing them in another location, the SCARA was introduced to assembly lines in 1981. XCON
, an expert system designed to customize orders for industrial use, was released in 1979. The Stanford Cart successfully crossed a room full of chairs in 1979. The Stanford Cart relied primarily on stereo vision to navigate and determine distances. The Robotics Institute
at Carnegie Mellon University
was founded in 1979 by Raj Reddy
.
created the first "direct drive arm" in 1981. The first of its kind, the arm's motors were contained within the robot itself, eliminating long transmissions. IBM released its first personal computer
(PC) in 1981; the name of the computer was responsible for popularizing the term "personal computer". Prospector a "computer-based consultation program for mineral exploration", created in 1976, discovered an unknown deposit of molybdenum
in Washington state. The expert system had been updated annually since its creation. The Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project
(FGCS) was started in 1982. Its goals were knowledge based information processing and massive parallelism in a supercomputer, artificial intelligence like system. Cyc
, a project to create a database of common sense for artificial intelligence, was started in 1984 by Douglas Leant. The program attempts to deal with ambiguity in language, and is still underway. The first program to publish a book, the expert system Racter
, programmed by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter, wrote the book "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" in 1983. It is now thought that a system of complex templates were used. In 1984 Wabot-2 was revealed; capable of playing the organ, Wabot-2 had 10 fingers and two feet. Wabot-2 was able to read a score of music and accompany a person. In 1985, Kawasaki Heavy Industries'
license agreement with Unimation was terminated; Kawasaki began to produce its own robots. Their first robot was released one year later. By 1986, artificial intelligence revenue was about $1 billion US dollars. Chess playing programs HiTech
and Deep Thought
defeated chess masters in 1989. Both were developed by Carnegie Mellon University; Deep Thought development paved the way for the Deep Blue. In 1986, Honda
began its humanoid research and development program to create robots capable of interacting successfully with humans. Artificial intelligence related technologies, not including robots, now produce a revenue of $1.4 billion US dollars. In 1988, Stäubli Group purchased Unimation. The Connection Machine
was built in 1988 by Daniel Hillis; the supercomputer used 64,000 processors simultaneously. A hexapodal
robot named Genghis was revealed by MIT in 1989. Genghis was famous for being made quickly and cheaply due to construction methods; Genghis used 4 microprocessors, 22 sensors, and 12 servo motors. Rodney Brooks and Anita M. Flynn published "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of The Solar System". The paper advocated creating smaller cheaper robots in greater numbers to increase production time and decrease the difficulty of launching robots into space.
sponsored competition, Carnegie Mellon University's eight legged robot Dante failed to collect gases from Mt. Erebus
because of a broken fiber optic cable. Dante was designed to scale slopes and harvest gases near the surface of the magma
; however, the failure in the cable did not permit the robot to enter the active volcano. In 1994, Dante II entered Mt. Spurr
and successfully sampled the gases within the volcano. The biomimetic robot RoboTuna
was built by doctoral student David Barrett
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 to study how fish swim in water. RoboTuna is designed to swim and resemble a blue fin tuna. Invented by Dr. John Adler
, in 1994, the Cyberknife
(a stereotactic radiosurgery
performing robot) offered an alternative treatment of tumors with a comparable accuracy to surgery performed by human doctors. Honda's P2 humanoid robot was first shown in 1996. Standing for "Prototype Model 2", P2 was an integral part of Honda's humanoid development project; over 6 feet tall, P2 was smaller than its predecessors and appeared to be more human-like in its motions. Expected to only operate for seven days, the Sojourner rover finally shuts down after 83 days of operation in 1997. This small robot (only weighing 23 lbs) performed semi-autonomous operations on the surface of Mars
as part of the Mars Pathfinder
mission; equipped with an obstacle avoidance program, Sojourner was capable of planning and navigating routes to study the surface of the planet. Sojourner's ability to navigate with little data about its environment and nearby surroundings allowed the robot to react to unplanned events and objects. Also in 1997, IBM's chess playing program Deep Blue beat the then current World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov
playing at the "Grandmaster" level. The super computer was a specialized version of a framework produced by IBM, and was capable of processing twice as many moves per second as it had during the first match (which Deep Blue had lost), reportedly 200,000,000 moves per second. The event was broadcast live over the internet and received over 74 million hits. The P3 humanoid robot was revealed by Honda in 1998 as a part of the company's continuing humanoid project. In 1999, Sony introduced the AIBO
, a robotic dog capable of interacting with humans, the first models released in Japan sold out in 20 minutes. Honda revealed the most advanced result of their humanoid project in 2000, named ASIMO
. ASIMO is capable of running, walking, communication with humans, facial and environmental recognition, voice and posture recognition, and interacting with its environment. Sony also revealed its Sony Dream Robots
, small humanoid robots in development for entertainment. In October 2000, the United Nations
estimated that there were 742,500 industrial robots in the world, with more than half of the robots being used in Japan.
. The Canadarm2 is a larger, more capable version of the arm used by the Space Shuttle
and is hailed as being "smarter." Also in April, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Global Hawk made the first autonomous non-stop flight over the Pacific Ocean from Edwards Air Force Base
in California to RAAF Base Edinburgh
in Southern Australia. The flight was made in 22 hours. The popular Roomba
, a robotic vacuum cleaner, was first released in 2002 by the company iRobot
. In 2004, Cornell University
revealed a robot capable of self-replication; a set of cubes capable of attaching and detaching, the first robot capable of building copies of itself. On January 3 and 24 the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity land on the surface of Mars. Launched in 2003, the two robots will drive many times the distance originally expected, and Opportunity is still operating as of mid 2011. All 15 teams competing in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge
failed to complete the course, with no robot successfully navigating more than five percent of the 150 mile off road course, leaving the $1 million dollar prize unclaimed. In the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, five teams completed the off-road course; Stanford University's Stanley
won first place and the $2 million dollar prize. Also in 2005, Honda revealed a new version of its ASIMO robot, updated with new behaviors and capabilities. In 2006, Cornell University revealed its "Starfish" robot, a 4-legged robot capable of self modeling and learning to walk after having been damaged. In September 2007, Google
announced its Lunar X Prize
. The Lunar X Prize offers 30 million dollars to the first private company which lands a rover on the moon and sends images back to earth. In 2007, TOMY
launched the entertainment robot, i-sobot, which is a humanoid bipedal robot that can walk like a human beings and performs kicks and punches and also some entertaining tricks and special actions under "Special Action Mode".
Discovery
on the STS-133
mission. It is the first humanoid robot
in space, and although its primary job for now is teaching engineers how dexterous robots behave in space, the hope is that through upgrades and advancements, it could one day venture outside the station to help spacewalkers make repairs or additions to the station or perform scientific work.
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
s has its roots as far back as ancient myths and legends.
Modern concepts were begun to be developed when the Industrial Revolution allowed the use of more complex mechanics and the subsequent introduction of electricity made it possible to power machines with small compact motors. After the 1920s the modern formulation of a humanoid machine was developed to the stage where it was possible to envisage human sized robots with the capacity for near human thoughts and movements, first envisaged millennia before. The first uses of modern robots were in factories as industrial robots - simple fixed machines capable of manufacturing tasks which allowed production without the need for human assistance. Digitally controlled industrial robot
Industrial robot
An industrial robot is defined by ISO as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes...
s and robots making use of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
have been built since the 1960s.
Chinese accounts relate a history of automata back to the 10th century BC when Yan Shi is credited with making an automaton resembling a human in an account from the Lie Zi
Liezi
The Liezi is a Daoist text attributed to Lie Yukou, a circa 5th century BCE Hundred Schools of Thought philosopher, but Chinese and Western scholars believe it was compiled around the 4th century CE.-Textual history:...
text.
Western and Eastern civilisations have concepts of artificial servants and companions with a long history. Many ancient mythologies include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants built by the Greek god Hephaestus
Hephaestus
Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He is the son of Zeus and Hera, the King and Queen of the Gods - or else, according to some accounts, of Hera alone. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes...
(Vulcan
Vulcan (mythology)
Vulcan , aka Mulciber, is the god of beneficial and hindering fire, including the fire of volcanoes in ancient Roman religion and Roman Neopaganism. Vulcan is usually depicted with a thunderbolt. He is known as Sethlans in Etruscan mythology...
to the Romans), the clay golem
Golem
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing....
s of Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend.
Likely fictional, the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
illustrates the concept of robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
by stating that the god Hephaestus
Hephaestus
Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He is the son of Zeus and Hera, the King and Queen of the Gods - or else, according to some accounts, of Hera alone. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes...
made talking mechanical handmaidens out of gold. Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum is reputed to have built a mechanical pigeon around 400 BC, possibly powered by steam, capable of flying. The clepsydra was made in 250 BC by Ctesibius of Alexandria, a physicist and inventor from Ptolemaic Egypt. Heron of Alexandria (10–70 AD) created programmable devices in the late 1st century AD, including one that allegedly could speak.
Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
took up an earlier reference in Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad and speculated that automatons could someday bring about human equality by making the abolition of slavery possible in his book Politics (ca. 322 BC).
Ancient beginnings
King Mu of Zhou
King Mu of Zhou or King Mu of Chou or Mu Wang or Mu Wang was the fifth sovereign of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty. The dates of his reign are 976-922 BC or 956-918 BC.-Life:...
(1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork.
The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.
Early water clocks
Water clock
A water clock or clepsydra is any timepiece in which time is measured by the regulated flow of liquid into or out from a vessel where the amount is then measured.Water clocks, along with sundials, are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions...
are sometimes grouped in with the beginning of robotics. They began in China in the 6th century BC and the Greco-Roman world in the 4th century BC where the Clepsydra is known to have been used as a stop-watch for imposing a time limit on clients' visits in Athenian
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
brothels.
The idea of artificial people in western mythology dates at least as far back as the ancient legends of Cadmus
Cadmus
Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology was a Phoenician prince, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa. He was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores...
, who sowed dragon teeth that turned into soldiers, and the myth of Pygmalion
Pygmalion (mythology)
Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, he is most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses, X, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.-In Ovid:In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a...
, whose statue of Galatea
Galatea (mythology)
-Name "Galatea":Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, its use in connection with Pygmalion originated with a post-classical writer. No extant ancient text mentions the statue's name...
came to life. In Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, the deformed god of metalwork (Vulcan
Vulcan (mythology)
Vulcan , aka Mulciber, is the god of beneficial and hindering fire, including the fire of volcanoes in ancient Roman religion and Roman Neopaganism. Vulcan is usually depicted with a thunderbolt. He is known as Sethlans in Etruscan mythology...
or Hephaestus
Hephaestus
Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He is the son of Zeus and Hera, the King and Queen of the Gods - or else, according to some accounts, of Hera alone. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes...
) created mechanical servants, ranging from intelligent, golden handmaidens to more utilitarian three-legged tables that could move about under their own power, and the bronze man Talos
Talos
In Greek mythology, Talos or Talon was a giant man of bronze who protected Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders by circling the island's shores three times daily while guarding it.- History :...
defended Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
.
Concepts akin to a robot can be found as long ago as the 4th century BC, when the Greek mathematician Archytas
Archytas
Archytas was an Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist. He was a scientist of the Pythagorean school and famous for being the reputed founder of mathematical mechanics, as well as a good friend of Plato....
of Tarentum postulated a mechanical bird he called "The Pigeon" which was propelled by steam
Steam
Steam is the technical term for water vapor, the gaseous phase of water, which is formed when water boils. In common language it is often used to refer to the visible mist of water droplets formed as this water vapor condenses in the presence of cooler air...
. Yet another early automaton
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
was the clepsydra
Water clock
A water clock or clepsydra is any timepiece in which time is measured by the regulated flow of liquid into or out from a vessel where the amount is then measured.Water clocks, along with sundials, are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions...
, made in 250 BC by Ctesibius
Ctesibius
Ctesibius or Ktesibios or Tesibius was a Greek inventor and mathematician in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt. He wrote the first treatises on the science of compressed air and its uses in pumps...
of Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
, a physicist and inventor from Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter invaded Egypt and declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to...
. Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineerEnc. Britannica 2007, "Heron of Alexandria" who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt...
made numerous innovations in the field of automata, including one that allegedly could speak.
Taking up the earlier reference in Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
speculated in his Politics (ca. 322 BC, book 1, part 4) that automatons could someday bring about human equality by making possible the abolition of slavery:
Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineerEnc. Britannica 2007, "Heron of Alexandria" who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt...
created numerous "programmable" automated devices, including one that allegedly could speak.
Jewish lore mentions the Jewish legend of the Golem
Golem
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing....
, a clay creature animated by Kabbalistic magic. Similarly, in the Younger Edda, Norse mythology
Norse mythology
Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
tells of a clay giant, Mökkurkálfi or Mistcalf, constructed to aid the troll Hrungnir in a duel with Thor
Thor
In Norse mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility...
, the God of Thunder
Thunder
Thunder is the sound made by lightning. Depending on the nature of the lightning and distance of the listener, thunder can range from a sharp, loud crack to a long, low rumble . The sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning produces rapid expansion of the air surrounding and within...
.
500 to 1500
Su Song
Su Song was a renowned Chinese polymath who specialized himself as a statesman, astronomer, cartographer, horologist, pharmacologist, mineralogist, zoologist, botanist, mechanical and architectural engineer, poet, antiquarian, and ambassador of the Song Dynasty .Su Song was the engineer of a...
in Kaifeng, China
Kaifeng
Kaifeng , known previously by several names , is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, Central China. Nearly 5 million people live in the metropolitan area...
in 1088, featured mechanical mannequins that chimed the hours, ringing gongs or bells among other devices. Al-Jazari
Al-Jazari
Abū al-'Iz Ibn Ismā'īl ibn al-Razāz al-Jazarī was a Muslim polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, mathematician and astronomer from Al-Jazira, Mesopotamia, who lived during the Islamic Golden Age...
(1136–1206), an Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty
Artuqid dynasty
The Artquids or Artuqid dynasty was a Turkmen dynasty that ruled in Eastern Anatolia, Northern Syria and Northern Iraq in the eleventh and twelfth centuries...
, designed and constructed a number of automatic machines, including kitchen appliances, musical automata powered by water, and the first programmable
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
humanoid robot
Humanoid robot
A humanoid robot or an anthropomorphic robot is a robot with its overall appearance, based on that of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots...
in 1206. Al-Jazari's robot was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism
Mechanism (engineering)
A mechanism is a device designed to transform input forces and movement into a desired set of output forces and movement. Mechanisms generally consist of moving components such as gears and gear trains, belt and chain drives, cam and follower mechanisms, and linkages as well as friction devices...
had a programmable drum machine with peg
PEG
PEG or Peg may refer to:Devices* Clothes peg* Tent peg* Tuning peg, on a musical instrument* Piton, in climbing* Part of a flatland BMX bicycleScience, medicince and computing...
s (cam
Cam
A cam is a rotating or sliding piece in a mechanical linkage used especially in transforming rotary motion into linear motion or vice-versa. It is often a part of a rotating wheel or shaft that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path...
s) that bump into little lever
Lever
In physics, a lever is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to either multiply the mechanical force that can be applied to another object or resistance force , or multiply the distance and speed at which the opposite end of the rigid object travels.This leverage...
s that operate the percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations.
Interest in automata was either mostly non-existent in medieval Europe
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, or unrecorded. Oriental automata did, however, find their way into the imaginary worlds of medieval literature. For instance, the Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...
tale Roman van Walewein ("The Romance of Walewein", early 13th century) describes mechanical birds and angels producing sound by means of systems of pipes.
One of the first recorded designs of a humanoid robot was made by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
(1452–1519) in around 1495. Da Vinci's notebooks, rediscovered in the 1950s, contain detailed drawings of a mechanical knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
in armour which was able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. The design is likely to be based on his anatomical research recorded in the Vitruvian Man
Vitruvian Man
The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and...
but it is not known whether he attempted to build the robot (see: Leonardo's robot
Leonardo's robot
Leonardo's robot refers to a humanoid automaton designed by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1464, when Leonardo was 12 years old.The design notes for the robot appear in sketchbooks that were rediscovered in the 1950s. Leonardo displayed his "robot" at a celebration hosted by Duke Sforza at the...
).
1500 to 1800
Between 1500 and 1800, many automatons were built including ones capable of acting, drawing, flying, and playing music; several mechanical calculators were also built in this time period, some of the most famous ones are Wilhelm SchickardWilhelm Schickard
Wilhelm Schickard was a German polymath who designed a calculating machine in 1623, twenty years before the Pascaline of Blaise Pascal. Unfortunately a fire destroyed the machine as it was being built in 1624 and Schickard decided to abandon his project...
's "Calculating Clock", Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...
's "Pascaline", and the "Leibniz Stepped Drum
Stepped Reckoner
The Step Reckoner was a digital mechanical calculator invented by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694. The name comes from the translation of the German term for its operating mechanism; staffelwalze meaning 'stepped drum'...
", by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In 1533, Johannes Müller von Königsberg created an automaton eagle and fly made of iron; both could fly. John Dee
John Dee (mathematician)
John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy....
is also famous for creating a wooden beetle, capable of flying.
Some of the most famous works of the period were created by Jacques de Vaucanson
Jacques de Vaucanson
Jacques de Vaucanson was a French inventor and artist who was responsible for the creation of impressive and innovative automata and machines such as the first completely automated loom.-Early life:...
in 1737, including an automaton flute player, tambourine player, and his most famous work, "The Digesting Duck
Digesting Duck
The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them...
". Vaucanson's duck was powered by weights and was capable of imitating a real duck by flapping its wings (over 400 parts were in each of the wings alone), eat grain, digest it, and defecate by excreting matter stored in a hidden compartment.
John Kay
John Kay (flying shuttle)
John Kay was the inventor of the flying shuttle, which was a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution. He is often confused with his namesake: fellow Lancastrian textile machinery inventor, the unrelated John Kay who built the first "spinning frame".-Life in England:John Kay was born...
invented his "flying shuttle
Flying shuttle
The flying shuttle was one of the key developments in weaving that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution. It was patented by John Kay in 1733. Only one weaver was needed to control its lever-driven motion. Before the shuttle, a single weaver could not weave a fabric wider than arms length. Beyond...
" in 1733, and the "Spinning Jenny
Spinning jenny
The spinning jenny is a multi-spool spinning frame. It was invented c. 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England. The device reduced the amount of work needed to produce yarn, with a worker able to work eight or more spools at once. This grew to 120 as technology...
" was invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves
James Hargreaves
James Hargreaves was a weaver, carpenter and an inventor in Lancashire, England. He is credited with inventing the spinning Jenny in 1764....
, each radically increasing the speed of production in the weaving
Weaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
and spinning
Spinning (textiles)
Spinning is a major industry. It is part of the textile manufacturing process where three types of fibre are converted into yarn, then fabric, then textiles. The textiles are then fabricated into clothes or other artifacts. There are three industrial processes available to spin yarn, and a...
industries respectively. The Spinning Jenny is hand-powered and requires a skilled operator; Samuel Crompton
Samuel Crompton
Samuel Crompton was an English inventor and pioneer of the spinning industry.- Early life :Samuel Crompton was born at 10 Firwood Fold, Bolton, Lancashire to George and Betty Crompton . Samuel had two younger sisters...
's Spinning Mule
Spinning mule
The spinning mule was a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer...
first developed in 1779 is a fully automated power driven spinning machine capable of spinning hundreds of threads at once.
Richard Arkwright
Richard Arkwright
Sir Richard Arkwright , was an Englishman who, although the patents were eventually overturned, is often credited for inventing the spinning frame — later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power. He also patented a carding engine that could convert raw cotton into yarn...
built a water powered weaving machine, and factory around it in 1781, starting the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
.
The Japanese craftsman Hisashige Tanaka
Hisashige Tanaka
was a Japanese engineer and inventor during the late Edo and Meiji period Japan. He is one of the founders of what later became Toshiba Corporation. He has been called the "Thomas Edison of Japan" or Karakuri Giemon....
, known as "Japan's Edison", created an array of extremely complex mechanical toys, some of which were capable of serving tea, firing arrows drawn from a quiver, or even painting a Japanese kanji character. The landmark text Karakuri Zui (Illustrated Machinery) was published in 1796.
By 1800, cloth production was completely automated. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution the idea of automata began to be applied to industry, as cost and time saving devices.
1801 to 1900
Weaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
industry had led to large amounts of automation, and the idea of programmable machines became popular with Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer...
's Analytical Engine
Analytical engine
The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a mechanical calculator...
Babbage conceived his Analytical Engine as a replacement for his uncompleted Difference Engine
Difference engine
A difference engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.-History:...
; this larger, more complex device would be able to perform multiple operations, and would be operated by punch cards. Construction of the Analytical Engine was never completed; work was begun in 1833. However, Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace , born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine...
's work on the project has resulted in her being credited as the first computer programmer.
In 1837, the story of the Golem
Golem
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing....
of Prague, a humanoid artificial intelligence activated by inscribing Hebrew letters
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
on its forehead, based on George Boole
George Boole
George Boole was an English mathematician and philosopher.As the inventor of Boolean logic—the basis of modern digital computer logic—Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. Boole said,...
invented a new type of symbolic logic in 1847 which was instrumental to the creation of computers and robots.
In 1898 Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer...
publicly demonstrated a radio-controlled (teleoperated) boat, similar to a modern ROV. Based on his patents , and for "teleautomation", Tesla hoped to develop the wireless torpedo
Torpedo
The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...
into a weapon system
Weapon system
Weapon System is a United States military term that designated, along with a weapon system number , military experimental systems prior to official naming Weapon System is a United States military term that designated, along with a weapon system number (e.g., WS-110), military experimental (MX)...
for the US Navy (Cheney 1989).
1901 to 1950
The word robot was popularized by Czech author Karel ČapekKarel Capek
Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
in his 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.The...
. According to Karel, his brother Josef
Josef Capek
Josef Čapek was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word robot, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek.- Biography :...
was the actual inventor of the word "robot", creating the word from the Czech word "robota", meaning servitude. In 1927, Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
was released; the Maschinenmensch
Maschinenmensch
The Maschinenmensch from Metropolis, is a gynoid played by German actress Brigitte Helm in both her robotic and human incarnations...
("machine-human"), a gynoid
Gynoid
A gynoid is anything which resembles or pertains to the female human form. It is also used in American English medical terminology as a shortening of the term Gynecoid ....
humanoid robot, also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix", or the "Maria impersonator" (played by German actress Brigitte Helm
Brigitte Helm
Brigitte Helm was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis.-Career:...
), was the first robot ever to be depicted on film. The world's first actual robot, a humanoid named Televox operated through the telephone system, was constructed in the United States in 1927. In 1928, Makoto Nishimura produced Japan's first robot, Gakutensoku
Gakutensoku
Gakutensoku , the first robot to be built in Japan, was created in Osaka in 1929. The robot was designed and manufactured by biologist Makoto Nishimura...
.
In his 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
Entscheidungsproblem
In mathematics, the is a challenge posed by David Hilbert in 1928. The asks for an algorithm that will take as input a description of a formal language and a mathematical statement in the language and produce as output either "True" or "False" according to whether the statement is true or false...
" (submitted on 28 May 1936), Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...
's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based formal language with what are now called Turing machine
Turing machine
A Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a...
s, formal and simple devices. He proved that some such machine would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
, thus creating the basis for what is now called computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
.
Many robots were constructed before the dawn of computer-controlled servomechanisms, for the public relations purposes of major firms. Electro appeared in Westinghouse's pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Some were built in between such major public gatherings, such as Garco, made by Garrett AiResearch
Garrett AiResearch
Garrett AiResearch was a manufacturer of turboprop engines and turbochargers, and a pioneer in numerous aerospace technologies. It was previously known as Aircraft Tool and Supply Company, Garrett Supply Company, AiResearch Manufacturing Company, or simply AiResearch...
in the 1950s. These were essentially machines that could perform a few stunts, like the automatons of the 18th century.
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
created the first differential analyzer
Analog computer
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved...
at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. Known as the Differential Analyzer, the computer could solve differential equations. 1940 brought about the creation of two electrical computers, John Vincent Atanasoff
John Vincent Atanasoff
John Vincent Atanasoff was an American physicist and inventor.The 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer...
and Clifford Berry
Clifford Berry
Clifford Edward Berry was an American inventor.Clifford Berry was born in Gladbrook, Iowa to Fred Gordon Berry and Grace Strohm...
's Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
Atanasoff-Berry Computer
The Atanasoff–Berry Computer was the first electronic digital computing device. Conceived in 1937, the machine was not programmable, being designed only to solve systems of linear equations. It was successfully tested in 1942...
.
Ultimately, ideas from ABC were stolen for ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
.
In 1941 and 1942, Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
formulated the Three Laws of Robotics
Three Laws of Robotics
The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov and later added to. The rules are introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories...
, and in the process of doing so, coined the word "robotics".
In the UK, the Robinson machine was designed for the British war effort in cracking Enigma
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
messages. This was done at the British code-breaking establishment at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
; Ultra
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...
is the name for the intelligence so received.
Robinson was superseded by Colossus, which was built in 1943 to decode FISH
Fish (cryptography)
Fish was the Allied codename for any of several German teleprinter stream ciphers used during World War II. Enciphered teleprinter traffic was used between German High Command and Army Group commanders in the field, so its intelligence value was of the highest strategic value to the Allies...
messages by the British group Ultra; it was designed by Tommy Flowers
Tommy Flowers
Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers, MBE was an English engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.-Early life:...
and was 100 to 1000 times faster than Robinson, and was the first fully electronic computer. The Bletchley machines were kept secret for decades, and so do not appear in histories of computing written until recently. After the war, Tommy Flowers joined the team that built the early Manchester computers.
In Germany, Konrad Zuse
Konrad Zuse
Konrad Zuse was a German civil engineer and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941....
built the first fully programmable digital computer in the world (the Z3) in 1941; it would later be destroyed in 1944. Zuse was also known for building the first binary computer from 1936 to 1938, called the Z1
Z1 (computer)
The Z1 was a mechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse from 1935 to 1936 and built by him from 1936 to 1938. It was a binary electrically driven mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from punched tape....
; he also built the Z4
Z4 (computer)
The Z4 was the world's first commercial digital computer, designed by German engineer Konrad Zuse and built by his company Zuse Apparatebau between 1942 and 1945....
, his only machine to survive World War II.
The first American programmable computer was completed in 1944 by Howard Aiken
Howard Aiken
Howard Hathaway Aiken was a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer....
and Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper
Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language...
. The Mark I
Harvard Mark I
The IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator , called the Mark I by Harvard University, was an electro-mechanical computer....
(as it was called) ran computations for the US Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
until 1959. ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
was built in 1946 and gained fame because of its reliability, speed, and versatility. John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly spent 3 years building ENIAC, which weighed over 60,000 lbs.
In 1948, Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
formulated the principles of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
, the basis of practical robotics.
The first Turtles
Turtle (robot)
Turtles are a class of educational robots designed originally in the late 1940s and used in computer science and mechanical engineering training. These devices are traditionally built low to the ground with a roughly hemispheric shell and a power train capable of a very small turning radius...
(Elmo and Elsie) were created by pioneer roboticist William Grey Walter
William Grey Walter
W. Grey Walter was a neurophysiologist and robotician.-Overview:Walter was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1910. His ancestry was German/British on his father's side, and American/British on his mother's side. He was brought to England in 1915, and educated at Westminster School and afterwards...
in 1949.
The first working digital computer to be sold was Zuse's Z4
Z4 (computer)
The Z4 was the world's first commercial digital computer, designed by German engineer Konrad Zuse and built by his company Zuse Apparatebau between 1942 and 1945....
in Germany; the fully electronic US BINAC
BINAC
BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly, though they had started the design of EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania, chose to leave and start EMCC, the...
was sold twelve months earlier in September 1949 but it never worked reliably at the customer's site due to mishandling in transit. Second was the UK's Ferranti Mark 1 delivered in February 1951, the first software programmable digital electronic computer to be sold that worked upon delivery. It was based on the world's first software programmable digital electronic computer, Manchester's SSME of 1948.
In 1950, UNIVAC I
UNIVAC I
The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC...
(also by Eckert and Mauchley) handled the US Census
United States Census
The United States Census is a decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. The population is enumerated every 10 years and the results are used to allocate Congressional seats , electoral votes, and government program funding. The United States Census Bureau The United States Census...
results; it was the third commercially marketed computer that worked on delivery (in December 1951).
The Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
is proposed by Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Computing machinery and intelligence
Computing Machinery and Intelligence, written by Alan Turing and published in 1950 in Mind, is a seminal paper on the topic of artificial intelligence in which the concept of what is now known as the Turing test was introduced to a wide audience....
, which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"
1951 to 2000
After 1950 computers and robotics began to rapidly increase in both complexity and numbers as the technology had exponential growth in production, availability and capability.1951 to 1960
In 1951 William ShockleyWilliam Shockley
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s...
invented the bipolar junction transistor
Bipolar junction transistor
|- align = "center"| || PNP|- align = "center"| || NPNA bipolar transistor is a three-terminal electronic device constructed of doped semiconductor material and may be used in amplifying or switching applications. Bipolar transistors are so named because their operation involves both electrons...
, announced at a press conference on July 4, 1951. Shockley obtained a patent for this invention on September 25, 1951. In 1951 a computer called LEO became operational in the UK. It was built by Lyons
J. Lyons and Co.
J. Lyons & Co. was a market-dominant British restaurant-chain, food-manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1887 as a spin-off from the Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco company....
for its own use: this was the world's first software programmable digital electronic computer for commercial applications, exploiting the US development of mercury delay line memory, and built with the support of the Cambridge EDSAC
EDSAC
Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was an early British computer. The machine, having been inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England...
project. LEO was used for commercial work running business application programs, the first of which was rolled out 17 November 1951.
Eckert and Mauchly completed EDVAC
EDVAC
EDVAC was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program computer....
in 1951. An improvement on ENIAC and UNIVAC, EDVAC used mercury delay lines
Delay line memory
Delay line memory was a form of computer memory used on some of the earliest digital computers. Like many modern forms of electronic computer memory, delay line memory was a refreshable memory, but as opposed to modern random-access memory, delay line memory was serial-access...
to store data, making it the USA's first software stored program computer. In 1952, the television network CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
correctly predicted the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
as president using UNIVAC. In 1952 IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
announced its 701
IBM 701
The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer...
model computer, marketed towards scientific use, it was designed by Nathaniel Rochester. Stanislaw Ulam and physicist Paul Stein converted MANIAC I
MANIAC I
The MANIAC was an early computer built under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory...
(used for solving calculations involved in creating the hydrogen bomb) to play a modified game of chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
in 1956; it was the first computer to beat a human in a game of chess. The term "Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
was created at a conference held at Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
in 1956. Allen Newell
Allen Newell
Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology...
, J. C. Shaw
Cliff Shaw
J.C. Shaw was a systems programmer at the RAND Corporation. He is a coauthor of the first artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist, and was one of the developers of Information Processing Language, a programming language of the 1950s. It is considered the true "father" of the JOSS...
, and Herbert Simon
Herbert Simon
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...
pioneered the newly created artificial intelligence field with the Logic Theory Machine (1956), and the General Problem Solver
General Problem Solver
General Problem Solver was a computer program created in 1959 by Herbert Simon, J.C. Shaw, and Allen Newell intended to work as a universal problem solver machine. Any formalized symbolic problem can be solved, in principle, by GPS. For instance: theorems proof, geometric problems and chess...
in 1957. In 1958, John McCarthy
John McCarthy (computer scientist)
John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He coined the term "artificial intelligence" , invented the Lisp programming language and was highly influential in the early development of AI.McCarthy also influenced other areas of computing such as time sharing systems...
and Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
started the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab with $50,000. John McCarthy also created LISP
Lisp
A lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisp...
in the summer of 1958, a programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
still important in artificial intelligence research. Jack Kilby
Jack Kilby
Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American physicist who took part in the invention of the integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000. He is credited with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip...
and Robert Noyce
Robert Noyce
Robert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968...
invented the integrated circuit
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
or "chip" in 1959; the inventors worked independent of each other. This development eventually revolutionized computers by affecting both the size and speed.
1961 to 1971
UnimateUnimate
Unimate was the first industrial robot,which worked on a General Motors assembly line at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, in 1961.It was created by George Devol in the 1950s using his original patents...
, the first industrial robot
Industrial robot
An industrial robot is defined by ISO as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes...
ever created began work on the General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
assembly line in 1961; the machine was conceived in 1954 by George Devol
George Devol
George Charles Devol, Jr. was an American inventor who was awarded the patent for Unimate, the first industrial robot. Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm represented the foundation of the modern robotics industry.As an inventor he had over 40 patents and was...
. Unimate was manufactured by Unimation. Unimate is remembered as the first industrial robot. In 1962 John McCarthy founded the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. The Rancho Arm was developed as a robotic arm to help handicapped patients at the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital
Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center
Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center is a rehabilitation hospital located in Downey, California, United States. Its name in Spanish means "Friend's Ranch". It is accredited by the Joint Commission and the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities...
in Downey, California
Downey, California
Downey is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The city is best known as the birthplace of the Apollo space program, and is the city where folk singer Karen Carpenter lived and died...
; this computer controlled arm was bought by Stanford University in 1963. IBM announced its IBM System/360 in 1964. The system was heralded as being more powerful, faster, and more capable than its predecessors. In 1965, Gordon Moore
Gordon Moore
Gordon Earle Moore is the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation and the author of Moore's Law .-Life and career:...
, a co-founder of Intel in 1968, develops what will become known as Moore's Law
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
; the idea that the number of components capable of being built onto a chip will double every two years. The same year, doctoral student Edward Feigenbaum
Edward Feigenbaum
Edward Albert Feigenbaum is a computer scientist working in the field of artificial intelligence. He is often called the "father of expert systems."...
, geneticist and biochemist Joshua Lederberg
Joshua Lederberg
Joshua Lederberg ForMemRS was an American molecular biologist known for his work in microbial genetics, artificial intelligence, and the United States space program. He was just 33 years old when he won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that bacteria can mate and...
, and Bruce Buchanan (who held a degree in philosophy) begin work on the DENDRAL
Dendral
Dendral was an influential pioneer project in artificial intelligence of the 1960s, and the computer software expert system that it produced. Its primary aim was to study hypothesis formation and discovery in science...
, an expert system
Expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...
designed to work in the field of organic chemistry
Organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation of carbon-based compounds, hydrocarbons, and their derivatives...
. Feigenbaum also founded the Heuristic Programming Project in 1965, it later became the Stanford Knowledge Systems Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The program Mac Hack was also written in 1966; it beat artificial intelligence critic Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
in a game of chess. The program was created by Richard Greenblatt
Richard Greenblatt (programmer)
Richard D. Greenblatt is an American computer programmer. Along with Bill Gosper, he may be considered to have founded the hacker community, and holds a place of distinction in the Lisp and the MIT AI Lab communities.-Childhood:...
. Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
created the Logo
Logo (programming language)
Logo is a multi-paradigm computer programming language used in education. It is an adaptation and dialect of the Lisp language; some have called it Lisp without the parentheses. It was originally conceived and written as functional programming language, and drove a mechanical turtle as an output...
programming language in 1967. It was designed as an educational programming language. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
was released in 1968; the movie prominently features HAL 9000
HAL 9000
HAL 9000 is the antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction Space Odyssey saga. HAL is an artificial intelligence that interacts with the astronaut crew of the Discovery One spacecraft, usually represented as a red television-camera eye found throughout the ship...
, a malevolent artificial intelligence unit which controls a spacecraft. Marvin Minsky created the Tentacle Arm in 1968; the arm was computer controlled and its 12 joints were powered by hydraulics. Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
student Victor Scheinman
Victor Scheinman
Victor Scheinman is a pioneer in the field of robotics. He is a graduate of the now-defunct New Lincoln High School in New York. In the late 1950s, and while in high school, Scheinman engineered a speech-to-text machine as a science fair project...
created the Stanford Arm in 1969; the Stanford Arm is recognized as the first electronic computer controlled robotic arm (Unimate's instructions were stored on a magnetic drum). The first floppy disc was released in 1970. It measured eight inches in diameter and read-only
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
. The first mobile robot capable of reasoning about its surroundings, Shakey
Shakey the Robot
Shakey the Robot was the first general-purpose mobile robot to be able to reason about its own actions. While other robots would have to be instructed on each individual step of completing a larger task, Shakey could analyze the command and break it down into basic chunks by itself...
was built in 1970 by the Stanford Research Institute. Shakey combined multiple sensor inputs, including TV cameras, laser rangefinders, and "bump sensors" to navigate.
In the winter of 1970, the Soviet Union explored the surface of the moon with the lunar vehicle Lunokhod 1
Lunokhod 1
Lunokhod 1 was the first of two unmanned lunar rovers landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of its Lunokhod program. The spacecraft which carried Lunokhod 1 was named Luna 17...
, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.
1971 to 1980
The first microprocessorMicroprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, called the 4004
Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit central processing unit released by Intel Corporation in 1971. It was the first complete CPU on one chip, and also the first commercially available microprocessor...
was created by Ted Hoff at Intel in 1971. Measuring 1/8 of an inch by 1/16 of an inch, the chip itself was more powerful than ENIAC. Artificial intelligence critic Hubert Dreyfuss published his influential book "What Computers cannot Do" in 1972. Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Huntley Trumbull is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of...
's "Silent Running
Silent Running
Silent Running is a 1972 environmentally themed science fiction film starring Bruce Dern and directed by Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked as a special effects supervisor on such science fiction films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.-Plot summary:Silent Running depicts a...
" was released in 1972; the movie was notable for the three robot co-stars, named Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Released in 1973 was the logic based programming language PROLOG
Prolog
Prolog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...
; this logic based language becomes important in the field of artificial intelligence. Freddy
Freddy II
Freddy and Freddy II were experimental robots built in the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception ....
and Freddy II
Freddy II
Freddy and Freddy II were experimental robots built in the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception ....
, both built in the United Kingdom, were robots capable of assembling wooden blocks in a period of several hours. German based company KUKA
KUKA
KUKA is a leading German producer of industrial robots for a variety of industries - from automotive and fabricated metals to food and plastics...
built the world's first industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes, known as FAMULUS. In 1974, David Silver designed The Silver Arm; the Silver Arm was capable of fine movements replicating human hands. Feedback was provided by touch and pressure
Pressure sensor
A pressure sensor measures pressure, typically of gases or liquids. Pressure is an expression of the force required to stop a fluid from expanding, and is usually stated in terms of force per unit area. A pressure sensor usually acts as a transducer; it generates a signal as a function of the...
sensors and analyzed by a computer. MYCIN
Mycin
In artificial intelligence, MYCIN was an early expert system designed to identify bacteria causing severe infections, such as bacteremia and meningitis, and to recommend antibiotics, with the dosage adjusted for patient's body weight — the name derived from the antibiotics themselves, as many...
, an expert system developed to study decisions and prescriptions relating to blood infections. MYCIN was written in Lisp. Marvin Minsky published his landmark paper "A Framework for Representing Knowledge" on artificial intelligence. By 1975, four expert systems relating to medicine had been created; PIP
Pip
-Biology and medicine:* Phosphatidylinositol phosphate* Prolactin-induced protein* Proximal interphalangeal joint* Patient intelligence panel-Business and finance:* Percentage in point , a currency exchange rate fluctuation...
, MYCIN, CASNET, and Internist. 1975: more than 5,000 computers were sold in the United States, and the first personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
was introduced. The Kurzweil Reading Machine (invented by Raymond Kurzweil
Raymond Kurzweil
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil is an American author, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition , text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments...
), intended to help the blind, was released in 1976. Capable of recognizing characters, the machine formulated pronunciation based on programmed rules. Based on studies of flexible objects in nature (such as elephant trunks and the vertebrae of snakes), Shigeo Hirose
Shigeo Hirose
BEng, MEng, PhD is an award winning pioneer of robotics technology and a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.Born in Tokyo and attending Hibiya High School, he graduated from Yokohama National University in 1971 and received a Ph.D from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1976 where he...
designed the Soft Gripper in 1976 the gripper was capable of conforming to the object it was grasping. The knowledge based system Automated Mathematician
Automated Mathematician
The Automated Mathematician is one of the earliest successful discovery systems. It was created by Doug Lenat in Lisp, and in 1977 led to Lenat being awarded the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award....
was presented by Douglas Lenat
Douglas Lenat
Douglas B. Lenat is the CEO of Cycorp, Inc. of Austin, Texas, and has been a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence, especially machine learning , knowledge representation, blackboard systems, and "ontological engineering"...
in 1976 as part of his doctoral dissertation. Automated Mathematician began with a knowledge of 110 concepts and rediscovered many mathematical principles; Automated Mathematician was written in Lisp. Joseph Weizenbaum
Joseph Weizenbaum
Joseph Weizenbaum was a German-American author and professor emeritus of computer science at MIT.-Life and career:...
(creator of ELIZA
ELIZA
ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR...
, a program capable of simulating a Rogerian physcotherapist) published Computer Power and Human Reason
Computer Power and Human Reason
Joseph Weizenbaum's influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because...
, presenting an argument against the creation of artificial intelligence. Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak created the Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
in 1977, and released the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
. George Lucas'
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
movie Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
was also released in 1977. Star Wars featured two robots; an android named C-3PO
C-3PO
C-3PO is a robot character from the Star Wars universe who appears in both the original Star Wars films and the prequel trilogy. He is also a major character in the television show Droids, and appears frequently in the series' "Expanded Universe" of novels, comic books, and video games...
and R2-D2
R2-D2
R2-D2 , is a character in the Star Wars universe. An astromech droid, R2-D2 is a major character throughout all six Star Wars films. Along with his droid companion C-3PO, he joins or supports Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Obi-Wan Kenobi in various points in the saga...
, both of which become iconic as robots. Voyagers 1
Voyager 1
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA in 1977, to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for as of today , the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. At a distance of as of...
and 2
Voyager 2
The Voyager 2 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space...
were launched in 1977 to explore the solar system. The 30 year old robotic space probes continue to transmit data back to earth and are approaching the heliopause and the interstellar medium
Interstellar medium
In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, dust, and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space...
. The SCARA
SCARA
The SCARA acronym stands for Selective Compliant Assembly Robot Arm or Selective Compliant Articulated Robot Arm.In 1981, Sankyo Seiki, Pentel and NEC presented a completely new concept for assembly robots. The robot was developed under the guidance of Hiroshi Makino, a professor at the University...
, Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm, was created in 1978 as an efficient, 4-axis robotic arm. Best used for picking up parts and placing them in another location, the SCARA was introduced to assembly lines in 1981. XCON
Xcon
The R1 program was a production-rule-based system written in OPS5 by John P. McDermott of CMU in 1978 to assist in the ordering of DEC's VAX computer systems by automatically selecting the computer system components based on the customer's requirements...
, an expert system designed to customize orders for industrial use, was released in 1979. The Stanford Cart successfully crossed a room full of chairs in 1979. The Stanford Cart relied primarily on stereo vision to navigate and determine distances. The Robotics Institute
Robotics Institute
The Robotics Institute is a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is considered to be one of the leading centers of robotics research in the world....
at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
was founded in 1979 by Raj Reddy
Raj Reddy
Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy , a Turing Award winner, is one of the early pioneers in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University for over 40 years. He was the founding Director of the Robotics Institute at CMU...
.
1981 to 1990
Takeo KanadeTakeo Kanade
is a Japanese computer scientist and one of the world's foremost researchers in computer vision. He is currently U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor at Carnegie Mellon University...
created the first "direct drive arm" in 1981. The first of its kind, the arm's motors were contained within the robot itself, eliminating long transmissions. IBM released its first personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
(PC) in 1981; the name of the computer was responsible for popularizing the term "personal computer". Prospector a "computer-based consultation program for mineral exploration", created in 1976, discovered an unknown deposit of molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
in Washington state. The expert system had been updated annually since its creation. The Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project
Fifth generation computer
The Fifth Generation Computer Systems project was an initiative by Japan'sMinistry of International Trade and Industry, begun in 1982, to create a "fifth generation computer" which was supposed to perform much calculation using massive parallel processing...
(FGCS) was started in 1982. Its goals were knowledge based information processing and massive parallelism in a supercomputer, artificial intelligence like system. Cyc
Cyc
Cyc is an artificial intelligence project that attempts to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base of everyday common sense knowledge, with the goal of enabling AI applications to perform human-like reasoning....
, a project to create a database of common sense for artificial intelligence, was started in 1984 by Douglas Leant. The program attempts to deal with ambiguity in language, and is still underway. The first program to publish a book, the expert system Racter
Racter
Racter was an artificial intelligence computer program that generated English language prose at random.-History:The name of the program is short for raconteur. The sophistication claimed for the program was likely exaggerated, as could be seen by investigation of the template system of text...
, programmed by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter, wrote the book "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" in 1983. It is now thought that a system of complex templates were used. In 1984 Wabot-2 was revealed; capable of playing the organ, Wabot-2 had 10 fingers and two feet. Wabot-2 was able to read a score of music and accompany a person. In 1985, Kawasaki Heavy Industries'
Kawasaki Heavy Industries
is an international corporation based in Japan. It has headquarters in both Chūō-ku, Kobe and Minato, Tokyo.The company is named after its founder Shōzō Kawasaki and has no connection with the city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa....
license agreement with Unimation was terminated; Kawasaki began to produce its own robots. Their first robot was released one year later. By 1986, artificial intelligence revenue was about $1 billion US dollars. Chess playing programs HiTech
HiTech
HiTech was a chess machine built at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of World Correspondence Chess Champion Dr. Hans J. Berliner, by Berliner, Carl Ebeling, Murray Campbell, and Gordon Goetsch....
and Deep Thought
Deep Thought (chess computer)
Deep Thought was a computer designed to play chess. Deep Thought was initially developed at Carnegie Mellon University and later at IBM. It was second in the line of chess computers developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu, starting with ChipTest and culminating in Deep Blue...
defeated chess masters in 1989. Both were developed by Carnegie Mellon University; Deep Thought development paved the way for the Deep Blue. In 1986, Honda
Honda
is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than...
began its humanoid research and development program to create robots capable of interacting successfully with humans. Artificial intelligence related technologies, not including robots, now produce a revenue of $1.4 billion US dollars. In 1988, Stäubli Group purchased Unimation. The Connection Machine
Connection Machine
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...
was built in 1988 by Daniel Hillis; the supercomputer used 64,000 processors simultaneously. A hexapodal
Hexapod (robotics)
A six-legged walking robot should not be confused with a Stewart platform, a kind of parallel manipulator used in robotics applications.A hexapod robot is a mechanical vehicle that walks on six legs. Since a robot can be statically stable on three or more legs, a hexapod robot has a great deal of...
robot named Genghis was revealed by MIT in 1989. Genghis was famous for being made quickly and cheaply due to construction methods; Genghis used 4 microprocessors, 22 sensors, and 12 servo motors. Rodney Brooks and Anita M. Flynn published "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of The Solar System". The paper advocated creating smaller cheaper robots in greater numbers to increase production time and decrease the difficulty of launching robots into space.
1991 to 2000
While competing in a 1993 NASANASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
sponsored competition, Carnegie Mellon University's eight legged robot Dante failed to collect gases from Mt. Erebus
Mount Erebus
Mount Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost historically active volcano on Earth, the second highest volcano in Antarctica , and the 6th highest ultra mountain on an island. With a summit elevation of , it is located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes, notably Mount...
because of a broken fiber optic cable. Dante was designed to scale slopes and harvest gases near the surface of the magma
Magma
Magma is a mixture of molten rock, volatiles and solids that is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and is expected to exist on other terrestrial planets. Besides molten rock, magma may also contain suspended crystals and dissolved gas and sometimes also gas bubbles. Magma often collects in...
; however, the failure in the cable did not permit the robot to enter the active volcano. In 1994, Dante II entered Mt. Spurr
Mount Spurr
Mount Spurr is a stratovolcano in the Aleutian Volcanic Arc of Alaska, named after United States Geological Survey geologist and explorer Josiah Edward Spurr, who led an expedition to the area in 1898...
and successfully sampled the gases within the volcano. The biomimetic robot RoboTuna
RoboTuna
The RoboTuna is a robotic fish project involving a series of robotic fish designed and built by a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.- The Project :The project started in 1993...
was built by doctoral student David Barrett
David Barrett
David M. Barrett has been practicing law in Washington, D.C. since 1975, specializing in litigation and administrative, agency, and legislative law. His diverse career has involved military service in the U.S...
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 to study how fish swim in water. RoboTuna is designed to swim and resemble a blue fin tuna. Invented by Dr. John Adler
John Adler
John Herbert Adler was a U.S. Representative for , serving from 2009 until 2011. He was a member of the Democratic Party. He was formerly a member of the New Jersey Senate from 1992 to 2009, where he represented the 6th Legislative District. The district stretches from the suburbs of Philadelphia...
, in 1994, the Cyberknife
Cyberknife
The CyberKnife is a frameless robotic radiosurgery system used for treating benign tumors, malignant tumors and other medical conditions. The system was invented by John R. Adler, a Stanford University Professor of Neurosurgery and Radiation Oncology, and Peter and Russell Schonberg of Schonberg...
(a stereotactic radiosurgery
Radiosurgery
Radiosurgery is a medical procedure that allows non-invasive treatment of benign and malignant tumors. It is also known as stereotactic radiotherapy, when used to target lesions in the brain, and stereotactic body radiotherapy when used to target lesions in the body...
performing robot) offered an alternative treatment of tumors with a comparable accuracy to surgery performed by human doctors. Honda's P2 humanoid robot was first shown in 1996. Standing for "Prototype Model 2", P2 was an integral part of Honda's humanoid development project; over 6 feet tall, P2 was smaller than its predecessors and appeared to be more human-like in its motions. Expected to only operate for seven days, the Sojourner rover finally shuts down after 83 days of operation in 1997. This small robot (only weighing 23 lbs) performed semi-autonomous operations on the surface of Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
as part of the Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder was an American spacecraft that landed a base station with roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner.Launched on December 4, 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II booster a...
mission; equipped with an obstacle avoidance program, Sojourner was capable of planning and navigating routes to study the surface of the planet. Sojourner's ability to navigate with little data about its environment and nearby surroundings allowed the robot to react to unplanned events and objects. Also in 1997, IBM's chess playing program Deep Blue beat the then current World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
playing at the "Grandmaster" level. The super computer was a specialized version of a framework produced by IBM, and was capable of processing twice as many moves per second as it had during the first match (which Deep Blue had lost), reportedly 200,000,000 moves per second. The event was broadcast live over the internet and received over 74 million hits. The P3 humanoid robot was revealed by Honda in 1998 as a part of the company's continuing humanoid project. In 1999, Sony introduced the AIBO
AIBO
AIBO was one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony...
, a robotic dog capable of interacting with humans, the first models released in Japan sold out in 20 minutes. Honda revealed the most advanced result of their humanoid project in 2000, named ASIMO
ASIMO
is a humanoid robot created by Honda. Introduced in 2000, ASIMO, which is an acronym for "Advanced Step in Innovative MObility", was created to be a helper to people. With aspirations of helping people who lack full mobility, ASIMO is used to encourage young people to study science and mathematics...
. ASIMO is capable of running, walking, communication with humans, facial and environmental recognition, voice and posture recognition, and interacting with its environment. Sony also revealed its Sony Dream Robots
QRIO
QRIO was to be a bipedal humanoid entertainment robot developed and marketed by Sony to follow up on the success of its AIBO toy. QRIO stood approximately 0.6 m tall and weighed 7.3 kg...
, small humanoid robots in development for entertainment. In October 2000, the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
estimated that there were 742,500 industrial robots in the world, with more than half of the robots being used in Japan.
2001 to the 2010
In April 2001, the Canadarm2 was launched into orbit and attached to the International Space StationInternational Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
. The Canadarm2 is a larger, more capable version of the arm used by the Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
and is hailed as being "smarter." Also in April, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Unmanned aerial vehicle
An unmanned aerial vehicle , also known as a unmanned aircraft system , remotely piloted aircraft or unmanned aircraft, is a machine which functions either by the remote control of a navigator or pilot or autonomously, that is, as a self-directing entity...
Global Hawk made the first autonomous non-stop flight over the Pacific Ocean from Edwards Air Force Base
Edwards Air Force Base
Edwards Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located on the border of Kern County, Los Angeles County, and San Bernardino County, California, in the Antelope Valley. It is southwest of the central business district of North Edwards, California and due east of Rosamond.It is named in...
in California to RAAF Base Edinburgh
RAAF Base Edinburgh
RAAF Base Edinburgh is located in Edinburgh, 25km north of the centre of Adelaide.It is primarily home to No 92 Wing's AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft that conduct surveillance operations throughout Australia's airspace....
in Southern Australia. The flight was made in 22 hours. The popular Roomba
Roomba
The Roomba is a series of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners sold by iRobot. Under normal operating conditions, it is able to navigate a living space and common obstacles while vacuuming the floor...
, a robotic vacuum cleaner, was first released in 2002 by the company iRobot
IRobot
iRobot Corporation is an American advanced technology company founded in 1990 and incorporated in Delaware in 2000, the iRobot Corporation designs robots such as an autonomous home vacuum cleaner , the Scooba that scrubs and cleans hard floors, and military and police robots, such as the PackBot...
. In 2004, Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
revealed a robot capable of self-replication; a set of cubes capable of attaching and detaching, the first robot capable of building copies of itself. On January 3 and 24 the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity land on the surface of Mars. Launched in 2003, the two robots will drive many times the distance originally expected, and Opportunity is still operating as of mid 2011. All 15 teams competing in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge
DARPA Grand Challenge
The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense...
failed to complete the course, with no robot successfully navigating more than five percent of the 150 mile off road course, leaving the $1 million dollar prize unclaimed. In the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, five teams completed the off-road course; Stanford University's Stanley
Stanley (vehicle)
Stanley is an autonomous vehicle created by Stanford University's Stanford Racing Team in cooperation with the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory...
won first place and the $2 million dollar prize. Also in 2005, Honda revealed a new version of its ASIMO robot, updated with new behaviors and capabilities. In 2006, Cornell University revealed its "Starfish" robot, a 4-legged robot capable of self modeling and learning to walk after having been damaged. In September 2007, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
announced its Lunar X Prize
Google Lunar X Prize
The Google Lunar X PRIZE, abbreviated GLXP, sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, is a space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. It was announced at the Wired Nextfest on 13 September 2007...
. The Lunar X Prize offers 30 million dollars to the first private company which lands a rover on the moon and sends images back to earth. In 2007, TOMY
TOMY
is a Japanese toy, children's merchandise and entertainment company created from the March 2006 merger of two companies: Tomy and long-time rival, Takara...
launched the entertainment robot, i-sobot, which is a humanoid bipedal robot that can walk like a human beings and performs kicks and punches and also some entertaining tricks and special actions under "Special Action Mode".
2010 to the present
Robonaut 2, the latest generation of the astronaut helpers, launched to the space station aboard space shuttleSpace Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
Discovery
Discovery
Discovery may refer to:* Discovery , observing or finding something unknown* Discovery , a character's learning something unknown* Discovery , a process in courts of law relating to evidence- Devices :...
on the STS-133
STS-133
STS-133 was the 133rd mission in NASA's Space Shuttle program; during the mission, Space Shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station. It was Discoverys 39th and final mission. The mission launched on 24 February 2011, and landed on 9 March 2011...
mission. It is the first humanoid robot
Humanoid robot
A humanoid robot or an anthropomorphic robot is a robot with its overall appearance, based on that of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots...
in space, and although its primary job for now is teaching engineers how dexterous robots behave in space, the hope is that through upgrades and advancements, it could one day venture outside the station to help spacewalkers make repairs or additions to the station or perform scientific work.
See also
- History of artificial intelligenceHistory of artificial intelligenceThe history of artificial intelligence began in antiquity, with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen; as Pamela McCorduck writes, AI began with "an ancient wish to forge the gods."...
- History of computing hardwareHistory of computing hardwareThe history of computing hardware is the record of the ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data....
- History of mass production
- Numerical controlNumerical controlNumerical control refers to the automation of machine tools that are operated by abstractly programmed commands encoded on a storage medium, as opposed to controlled manually via handwheels or levers, or mechanically automated via cams alone...
Further reading
- Baumgartner, Emmanuèlle. "Le temps des automates." In Le Nombre du temps, en hommage à Paul ZumthorPaul ZumthorPaul Zumthor, was a medievalist, literary historian and linguist. He was Swiss-born, from Geneva.He studied in Paris with Gustave Cohen, and worked on French etymology with Walther von Wartburg. In studying medieval French poetry, he formulated the concept of mouvance ....
. Paris: Champion, 1988. pp. 15–21. - Brett, G. "The Automata in the Byzantine 'Throne of Solomon'." Speculum 29 (1954): 477-87.
- Sullivan, P. "Medieval Automata: The 'Chambre de beautés' in BenoîtBenoît de Sainte-MaureBenoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....
's Roman de Troie." Romance Studies 6 (1985). pp. 1–20. - Read more about the History of Robotics