Shakey the Robot
Encyclopedia
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...
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. Due to its nature, the project combined research in robotics, computer vision
Computer vision
Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...
, and natural language processing
Natural language processing
Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....
. Because of this, it was the first project that melded logical reasoning and physical action.
Shakey was developed at the Artificial Intelligence Center
Artificial Intelligence Center
The Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International was founded in 1966 by Charles Rosen and studies artificial intelligence. One of their early projects was Shakey the Robot, the first general-purpose mobile robot. More recently, the center funded early development of CALO and Siri....
of Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI International
SRI International
SRI International , founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in Menlo Park, California, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later...
) in 1966 through 1972 with Charles Rosen
Charles Rosen (scientist)
Charles Rosen was a pioneer in artificial intelligence and founder of SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center...
as project manager. Other major contributors included Nils Nilsson, Alfred Brain, Bertram Raphael
Bertram Raphael
Bertram Raphael is an American computer scientist known for his contributions to artificial intelligence.-Biography:Raphael was born in 1936 in in New York...
, Richard Duda
Richard O. Duda
Richard O. Duda is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at San Jose State University renowned for his work on sound localization and pattern recognition. He lives in Menlo Park, California.He received B.S. and M.S...
, Peter Hart
Peter E. Hart
Peter E. Hart is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He was chairman and president of Ricoh Innovations, which he founded in 1997...
, Richard Fikes
Richard Fikes
Richard Earl Fikes , is a computer scientist, and is currently Professor Emeritus in the Computer Science department of Stanford University and professionally active as a consultant and expert witness...
, Richard Waldinger
Richard Waldinger
Richard J. Waldinger is a computer science researcher at SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center whose interests focus on the application of automated deductive reasoning to problems in software engineering and artificial intelligence...
, Thomas Garvey, Jay Tenenbaum, and Michael Wilber. The robot's programming was primarily done in 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...
. The STRIPS
STRIPS
In artificial intelligence, STRIPS is an automated planner developed by Richard Fikes and Nils Nilsson in 1971. The same name was later used to refer to the formal language of the inputs to this planner...
planner it used was conceived as the main planning component for the software it utilized.
Now retired from active duty, Shakey is currently on view in a glass display case
Display case
A display case is a cabinet with one or often more transparent glass sides and/or top, used to display objects for viewing, for example in an exhibition, museum, house, in retail, or a restaurant. Often labels are included with the displayed objects, providing information...
at the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
in Mountain View, California
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
.
Shakey and STRIPS
As the first robot that was a logical, goal-based agent, Shakey experienced a limited world. A version of Shakey's world could containa number of rooms connected by corridors, with doors and light switches available for the robot to interact with. Shakey had a short list of available actions within its planner. These actions involved traveling from one location to another, turning the light switches on and off, opening and closing the doors, climbing up and down from rigid objects, and pushing movable objects around. The STRIPS planner was able to devise a plan to enact all of the available actions, even though Shakey himself did not have the capability to execute all the actions within the plan personally.
Sample task
An operator types the command "push the block off the platform" at a computer console.Shakey looks around, identifies a platform with a block on it, and locates a ramp in order to reach the platform. Shakey then pushes the ramp over to the platform, rolls up the ramp onto the platform, and pushes the block off the platform. Mission accomplished.
Research results related to the Shakey project
- A* search algorithm
- Hough transformHough transformThe Hough transform is a feature extraction technique used in image analysis, computer vision, and digital image processing. The purpose of the technique is to find imperfect instances of objects within a certain class of shapes by a voting procedure...
- The visibility graphVisibility graphIn computational geometry and robot motion planning, a visibility graph is a graph of intervisible locations, typically for a set of points and obstacles in the Euclidean plane. Each node in the graph represents a point location, and each edge represents a visible connection between them...
method for finding Euclidean shortest pathEuclidean shortest pathThe Euclidean shortest path problem is a problem in computational geometry: given a set of polyhedral obstacles in a Euclidean space, and two points, find the shortest path between the points that does not intersect any of the obstacles....
s among obstacles in the plane.
Awards
- Inducted into the Robot Hall of FameRobot Hall of FameThe Robot Hall of Fame was established in 2003 by the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. It is designed to honor both achievements in robotics technology and robots from science fiction that have served as creative inspiration in robotics...
in 2004 alongside such notables as ASIMOASIMOis 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...
and C3PO.
Sources
- The Thinking Computer: Mind Inside Matter by Bertram RaphaelBertram RaphaelBertram Raphael is an American computer scientist known for his contributions to artificial intelligence.-Biography:Raphael was born in 1936 in in New York...
, 1976 - Shakey Video (320x212 - 24 min - RealVideo - 91.7 MB)
- Russell, Stuart J.Stuart J. RussellStuart Russell is a computer scientist known for his contributions to artificial intelligence.Stuart Russell was born in Portsmouth, England. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in Physics from Wadham College, Oxford in 1982, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from...
; Norvig, PeterPeter NorvigPeter Norvig is an American computer scientist. He is currently the Director of Research at Google Inc.-Educational Background:...
. "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd ed.)", Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, (2010). ISBN 0-13-604259-7