1980-82 – ROBART-I Sentry Robot – H. R. Everett (American)

Text and some images sourced from here – http://www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/land/robart/robart.html This link also contains other links to ROBART information, not covered here. ROBART-I was Bart Everett‘s thesis project at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  and one of the very first behavior-based autonomous robots ever built. The navigation scheme provided a layered hierarchy of behaviors …

1968c – Cybernetic Mouse – Johan de Boer (Dutch*)

The mouse machine was built around two servo motors. One is underneath the robot and drives the two rear wheels. The second servo, visible in the front part, moves a steering wheel to the left or right. There are three of those old fashioned relays visible on the left, used to activate the servo motors. …

1996-99 “ELF” Electronic Life Form – Tony Ellis (British)

ELF (Electronic Life Form) ELF is a concept cybernetic animal, which is the culmination of many years of research, the idea was to produce a cybernetic creature that is as close to a real life animal as possible. ELF can navigate its environment, feed and look after itself. It has a learning mechanism with emotion …

1976 – “Mike” “Microtron” -Tod Loofbourrow (American)

Interface Age article pdf here BOOK REVIEW from early KIM magazine   TITLE: How to build a computer controlled robot   AUTHOR: Tod Loofbourrow   PUBLISHER: Hayden Book Co.  #5681-8    $7.95 If youre looking for a book which presents a nuts and bolts approach to robot construction–you'll want to look at this book!  The author starts …

1976 – Entropy – Gene Oldfield (American)

ENTROPY— BUILDING A ROBOT FROM SCRATCH Gene Oldfield, began building his first major homebrew robot around 1976. Entropy, as it was called, was a mobile, three-wheeled robot powered by a car battery. A KIM single-board computer was interfaced to the sensors and relays by only seven microchips, which means that most of the processing was …