a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
A world’s-first robot that he built had inflatable arm linkages for deployment in hostile and confined spaces. The inflatable robot is a low-volume and low-weight alternative to rigid arms. The inflatable robot arms can achieve the required load-bearing capacity and rigidity through the appropriate selection of size and pressure. The links of the robot are …
Read More “1990 – Inflatable Robot Arm – Yoram Koren (Israeli/American)”
Dante: In 1992 a walking robot named Dante1 was designed and built at Carnegie Mellon University. Using a tensioned tether, Dante can ascend and descend steep slopes. It is designed to rappel into and explore active volcanic craters. The Dante project was an ambitious attempt to proceed, in 10 months, from idea to implementation. The …
Read More “1992-4 – Dante & Dante II – John E. Bares & William “Red†Whittaker (American)”
Todd's paper is very readable. See pdf here. Note that although referred to as a "train", Todd appears to have only built one. So the original "train" aspects have been lost. Its interesting to note that "BigDog" does have the concept for a "train", where the lead dog follows its human master, and other 'dogs' …
Read More “1990 – Iron Mule Train – Revisited by D.J. Todd (American)”