a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
Creep Mk-2 – 1962 A radio controlled programmable robot with an arm and gripper, designed by T R Bridge, Radio Control Models & Electronics April 1962. Creep was programmable by recording, on a tape recorder, the control tones then playing back the tones and feeding them into the transmitter (see text in pdf below). The …
'HEXY' – a real sexy homing device. Published in Radio Control Models & Electronics, March 1965. This simple light-seeking device is novel in that it scans when the drive motor is reversed.
Not so well known is that there were two main types of R2-D2's in the original Star Wars space opera. The models operated by Kenny Baker, the other a radio-controlled (R/C) model. Visually the main difference is the Kenny Baker model only ever had two legs, and the R/C version had three, although the single …
Read More “1975-6 – R2-D2 (from Star Wars) – John Stears (British)”
Herbert – A Soda Can collecting robot (named after the AI pioneer Herbert Simon). In mobile robot research we believe the structure of the platform, its capabilities, the choice of sensors, their capabilities, and the choice of processors, both onboard and offboard, greatly constrains the direction of research activity centered on the platform. We examine …
Read More “1986c – “Herbert” the Collection Machine – Brooks, Connell, Ning (American)”
"HILARE" An acronym of "Heuristiques Intégrées aux Logiciels et aux Automatisms dans un Robot Évolutif". Designed in 1977 at the Laboratoire d'Automatique et d'Analyse des Systèmes du C.N.R.S Toulouse, (LAAS), it is the first French autonomous mobile robot equipped with ultrasound sensors and laser telemetry. My friend David Buckley with HILARE, to give a comparison …
Read More “1977 – “HILARE” Autonomous Mobile Robot – French”