1965 – “Deep View” Submersible – Will Forman (American)

Project initiated in 1965 headed by Willis "Will" R. Forman (seen lying down in the above image). Launched in September 1971. A single mechanical arm with only three degrees of freedom and claw gripper. See Deep-View – 23:40 into the clip. "That's a 44 1/2 -inch-diameter glass hemisphere streamlining the bow of the Navy's latest …

1964 – Marine Mammals and Ordnance Recovery (American)

1964 onwards – Marine Mammals and Ordnance Recovery Ahab, a 5,500 pound killer whale, recovers a piece of inert ordnance using an acoustic pinger to guide him during the Deep Ops project. The whale is also equipped with a grabber device and a hydrazine system to allow the object to float easily to the surface. …

1968 – Minsky-Bennett Arm – Marvin Minsky and Bill Bennett (American)

Marvin Minsky with his Arm. Photo by Dan McCoy in OMNI Magazine, June 1980. Also called the "Tentacle" Arm. Marvin Minsky   – Activating a dead crayfish claw Selected transcript "And that’s the anatomy of the mechanical arm I built that you see in the MIT Museum today" One of the first things that happened was …

1968 – Scripps Benthic Lab Tensor Arm – Victor C. Anderson (American)

FIGURE 95.—The Scripps tensor arm. Stress on the nylon filaments actuates the arm. (Courtesy of V. C. Anderson, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) The "tensor arm," conceived by Victor Anderson, at the Marine Physical Laboratory (MPL) of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, has 16 degrees of freedom (fig. 95). The entire arm is hydraulically actuated by …

1965 – Scripps Benthic Lab Robot Arm – Victor C. Anderson (American)

Figure 16. In the Benthic Lab concept: an internally mounted manipulator can modify experimental setups and carry out maintenance and repair operations. (Courtesy V. C. Anderson, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) Source: Teleoperators and Human Augmentation p28 Source: MPL participation in SEALAB II Author: Marine Physical Laboratory Publication Date: 02-01-1966 Abstract: SIO Reference 66-3. This report …