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ROBOTICS: Featuring An Automated Pavlovian Dog!
 
Developed many years ago, in the "Pre-IC Age" these Robot Rovers could simulate such Classical Pavlovian Responses as: CONDITIONING, EXTINCTION, SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY, LEARNING CURVES and HIGHER-ORDER CONDITIONING.

Three-deck stepping-relays comprised the main elements of the dog's memory. A few transistors were used for "eye" and "ear" sensors, plus a "tail-wagging power amplifier."

Frederick W. Chesson

I knew of the April, 1961 "troubles" at SJ, but it was only when I was working in the Middletown area c 1961-69 that I regularly commuted through Berlin and got regular glimpses of the place and heard about it from fellow workers that I had any inclination to wonder what went on there. In that general period, I had developed the "Automated Pavlovian Dog" teaching-machine (also on my web site) that led to a connection with the Psychology Dept. at Wesleyan University. The "dog" was shown there and to a number of schools, hoping to build up my psych-lab construction business. I also attempted to interest Mr. Francis, knowing of his background, but by then in the late 1960s he had become excessively suspicious of my innocent motives, that resolved to "keep tabs" on what further incidents went on at SJ…which were all-too forthcoming over the next few years until the place finally closed for good.
Fred W. Chesson. E-mail 15 April 2006

The experiments with dogs relating to Classical Conditioning by Dr. Pavlov, earning the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1904, have been simulated over the years, culminating with today's extensive computer programs.
    The robot dogs shown in the photograph were developed by the author in the early Sixties, when the teaching-machine "fad" was approaching its heady zenith. At the time of the design, relay logic still had a cost advantage over the contemporary RTL gates, but some transistors were employed for the "eyes" and "ears" of the automated canines.
     Pavlov's experiments into Classical Conditioning underly much of modern learning theory; hence, if a robot, android, or humanoid is to learn, it is desirable to know what conditioning is all about. On a basic level, Pavlov rang a bell, then fed the dog, measuring the animal's response by the amount of saliva generated. After a while, the bell alone could evoke a salivatory reaction. On a human level, do our mouths not water at the mere aroma of a tasty pie? Or even at the verbal cue: "Dinner's ready!"…? But should the announcement prove false or premature, our anticipatory responses will diminish markedly. They can, however, be readily restored, along with our faith in human nature.
    Thus, the electro-mechanical dog was designed to perform the following simulations, which will be examined: conditioning (learning), extinction (forgetting), spontaneous recovery, higher order conditioning, learning curves, memory of stimuli occurrences, and stimuli hierarchy.
    In operation of the simulator, pressing the RESET switch puts the robot dog at an untrained level (electronic brainwash!). Salivation being somewhat difficult to imitate, the response to feeding was represented by having the dog wag its tail, a readily observable act of canine satisfaction. To hold the interest of younger students, the feeding stimulus was simulated via a plastic bone having a concealed magnet. When the magnet end of the bone was in proximity to the dog's "nose," a reed switch was closed, activating a tail-wagging power transistor and solenoid.
    Via a microphone and photocell, the dog could "hear" and "see." Normally, the audio stimulus was dominant, activating a Schmitt-trigger delay for a preset time interval. If the food stimulus was presented during this period, an AND gate caused this coincidence to be recorded by the Conditioning Event Counter, a ten-point stepping relay. (Today's equivalent probably being a CMOS type 4017 decimal-decoded counter chip.) Thus, when a preset number of coincidences had been registered, a relay flip-flop circuit caused the dog to now wag its tail to the sound stimulus as well as to food.
    So long as occasional sound-food coincidences, (reinforcement), occurred, the conditioned state would be maintained. But after another preset number of sound-stimuli without food following, (anticoincidence), say five, the flip-flop resets the dog to an unconditioned state, and it must be retrained.
    Sometimes, the experimenters found their animals would recover their condition, (spontaneous recovery), without any apparent external action.
This is similar to being given a telephone number in the afternoon, then forgetting it by night, only to have it suddenly come to mind the next morning, apparently released from some buffer-storage in the subconscious.
In the simulator, the spontaneous recovery function could be cut in and its "latent period" set by a potentiometer. Should normal conditioning then be re-established before it can act, it is reset for future use. Once it has acted, however, it is of a one-shot nature; following a second extinction, true conditioning must follow for the SR circuit to be reset.
    After conditioning and extinction, Pavlov found that his dogs not only relearned faster, but that their conditioned response was more resistant to extinction. This learning curve holds true in human education, as anyone who has learned a mathematical equation or foreign language will agree. Learning something the second time around nearly always is quicker and seems to stick longer as well.
    The learning curve simulation required multi-level stepping-relays in the original model, whose pick-off points were determined in connection with the original settings for conditioning and extinction counts. Thus, the original number of four coincidences would be reduced to three and then only one, while the anti-coincidences for extinction might be increased from five to six or
seven, and then to eight or ten.
    When the living dog has been very well trained to salivate to the sound of the bell, it was found that the bell as well as food could be employed to condition him to a new stimulus, such as light. This is called Higher-Order Conditioning, and represented the simulator's highest accomplishment, being activated by the learning curve counter.
    While the above model and its concepts are quite elementary, they still furnish a base upon which increasingly diverse and subtle forms of learning behavior may be simulated and explored. It has been found, for example, that conditioning is more resistant to extinction when every trial stimulus is not always rewarded. Such variable reinforcement scheduling, could lend itself readily to microprogramming applications.

"Way back in the dim '60s, in the midst of the Teaching Machine Era, I came up with a Pavlovian Dog demonstrator. (Two were actually built)  Responding to food (magnetic bone) sound and light stimuli, the concepts of Conditioning, Extinction, Learning Curves, Spontaneous Recovery and Higher-Order Conditioning were presented. (All done with relay logic and memory back then!)"
Fred W. Chesson

The Interface Age1978 article does not include the images above.

Extract from 1980's article:

The articles present experiences in interfacing and programming a SUPERKIM single board computer for the control of a Lour Control ET-2 robot shell. The ET-2 (Experimental Transmobile with 2 drive motors) consist of a three level frame powered by two separately driven wheels and balanced by a free caster.

Part 2 adds the sensors to give it true 'feedback'.

The SUPERKIM controlled ET-2 robot is an excellent, moderately priced system to which the robotics experimenter can easily add more sensors and other equipment.

The contact sensors … can be used to demonstrate obstacle avoidance behaviour in a suitably prepared environment.

see Robotics Age pdf's here  and here .

From Daniel C. Dennett's Home Page http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm [Mar08]
REWARD for information! I found it in an antique shop in Paris. It was made in France in the 1950s, so I have named it Tati, in honor of Jacques Tati (whose classic film Mon Oncle captures the same era with the same ingenious and humorous use of technology). I do not know who made Tati, or why, and would be pleased to receive any substantiated information about its provenance.
Further information was received on 12 March 2008 by email –
One correspondent has told me that Tati (my name for it, of course, not the name its creator chose, certainly) was commissioned by Prince Louis de Broglie, the Belgian physicist and Nobel laureate, for his granddaughter in Paris. She fell on hard times and sold it to an antique dealer. Could be, but my efforts to confirm the story have not yet born fruit.
Best wishes,
Daniel Dennett

[Ed. - Louis de Broglie was actually French and a bachelor.]

Image of "Tati" reversed on actual cover of book.

Tati on the cover of Dan Dennett's book Brianchildren Essays on Designing Minds.

The spring head antenna is most likely an overhead collision or bump detector. There are 4 sets of contacts inside the head, surrounding a dark red, brownish ball mounted on the lower end of the spring. A possibility could also be that it is used for manual steering/guidance, much like a joystick.

I'm unsure what the 3 sets of contacts mounted in the nose perform. Each of the lower contacts has a fine, element type wire wound around it. To the left, as seen in the previous image, is a cooling fan (and not the motor used for eye or jaw movement). These contacts may be a type of thermostat.

The driven gear wheel with attached crank arm steers the head. The head is unable to fully rotate; my guess is that it can only rotate about 30 deg. left or right, which also gives clues as to how it needs to be steered for overall guidance.

The aluminium 'cups' are Selenium cells – you can see metallic strips (3 strips) [ also seen in IOTA (4 strips)], but are mounted at the rear.
 
Unlike IOTA, where the selenium cells are used as 'eyes' for photo-tropism, they appear to be positioned more for remote-control purposes. So rather than be led by a light beam, it is possibly controlled by a light beam from behind. There are 5 separate cells at the rear (tati06.jpg – above); 2 located at each rear corner facing directly behind ; 2 at 90 deg to those just mentioned for side control; and 1 single cell directed rearwards mounted mid-point on the rear of the dog's body.
 
Possibilities on how these operated:
 
Factors to consider: steering is limited in the amount of head turn (see other photos for later discussion). This being the case, a reversing mechanism is probably required for the dog. What triggers the reversing mechanism? The central selenium cell?

• rear central facing rearward -  for stopping / starting dog, or using negative tropisms e.g. when illuminated from the rear, drive ahead – steering straight.  More likely it triggers the dog to reverse its drive motor. (Note: The steering wheel is also the driving wheel. The side wheels are unpowered).
• rear-left – facing rearward – function unknown?
• rear-left – facing left – forces steering to the left?
• rear – right – facing rearward – function unknown?
• rear – right – facing right  – forces steering to the right?

The brand of the battery is “Wonder”. It is an old French firm. This firm was sold to the American company Ralston (Energizer) in 1988. Certainly that little battery does not power the motors. There are no images of the rear of the robot dog, but I suspect that is where the heavier, larger batteries reside.

The GE 2N107 transistor was introduced into the market in 1955. See the Semiconductor Museum here.

Close-up of one of the Selenium cells.

The red motor in the back of the head drives a worm gear which in turn connects to the red eyes to swivel them left or right.

The motor is from the S.E.V company (Société Anonyme pour L’Équipment Électrique des Véhicules) that manufactured pre-war car components. It is a wiper motor, one of the few that could operate in manual or automatic mode at that time. [Nico-Aug 2011]

You can just see the vertical worm drive. This may be the motor and drive system that tilts the head.

Crude form of distance counter incorporated in the wheel. As the red tangs pass under the contacts, a circuit is opened and closed.

To the right of the blue-taped relay coil is an oval spindle (a cam). As it rotates it opens a pair of contacts mounted on each side of the cam. Function currently unknown.

The white-taped rod is the carrying handle. The diagonal rod operates the steering. Another bent rod at the base of the head lifts or lowers the head. There is a rod, threaded both end, that travels from the left to the right of the body. There is a crank and rod in the middle, but its function is currently unknown.

Hobby Electronics magazine (November 1979-January 1980) describes an autonomous robot.

HEBOT is a free roaming robot which can negotiate obstacles, steer towards a light (infra red) and follow a wire (A.C. current) around your home.

HEBOT emits a squeak when it detects light or following a collision. Control is transferred to the wire following circuitry unless HEBOT encounters an abstacle.

HEBOT also has a microphone, and can be wired to go into reverse, spin, or just stop.

HEBOT's 'random walking' is a bit of a misnomer, as it actually executes a series of spirals.

There is room for development. Board one will support a further four levels of control. It also has a simple constant-current nicad charger for its recharging 'nest'.

Click image for pdf.

Click image for pdf.

Click image for pdf.