a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
Either Hinz or Kunz as appeared in the 1962 Die Zeit article below. Hinz and Kunz (I can’t tell who is who at this stage) together with the electronic whistle. Hinz and Kunz appeared in the German robot exhibition “Die Roboter Kommen!” of 2007 Otto Walter Hasselof RH Note: Hinz and Kunz are significant in …
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Ivan Sutherland with M. Versatilis. Source: Carnegie Mellon University Archives Machina Versatilis , pictured above and below, was so named due to the versatile modular plug-in boards. M. Versatilis was the final of three models built, and at least two of this model were supposedly built. The first version, see blog post here, was originally built in …
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1953 – Timothy Turtle by Jack H. Kubanoff, Radio and Television News, April 1953 The text to the article is below. For the moment, the pages themselves can be found here. The article itself has a good description of its functionality. Some of its functionality reminds me of Berkeley's Squee i.e. flashing lamps controlling the …
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A significant feature of the tortoises is so often referred to as "An Imitation of Life". As well as their behaviour, the tortoises construction had to be such that autonomy could be exhibited. This is somewhat driven by the technology and parts available at the time. For Grey Walter's purposes, the models had to be self-contained …
Read More “Grey Walter’s Tortoises – Batteries, Re-charging, Hutches and Autonomy”
This entry describes two references to transistorized versions of Grey Walter's tortoises. The second reference refers to people and organisations mentioned in another post on W. Grey Walter and Edmund C. Berkeley . 1957 Jan 25 [WGW response to letter.] The main difficulty is in the mechanical assembly, particularly the gearbox which has to be completely …