a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
The last of Peter Holland's Mr. Robotham series of robots, "Mr. Robotham the Great". Super lightweight at 6 1/2 pounds. See complete pdf of "Mr. Robotham the Great" in Radio Modeller December 1981 here. See Peter's earlier robots from 1955 here. See other early Humanoid Robots here.
Tripod (The War of the Worlds) From Wikipedia Martian tripod illustration drawn by Henrique Alvim Corréa for a 1906 edition of the novel.Tripods or fighting-machines are a type of fictional three-legged walker from the H. G. Wells' classic science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, used by Martians to invade Earth. The Novel The …
Read More “1913 – The Thing (Martian Fighting Machine – Tripod) – H.G. Wells (British)”
Pic of cover of Eagle – 20 Jan 1956 Vol 7 No. 1. Phant Walking tank. Concept working drawings including the “walking tank” [top left]. From Frank Hampson’s “Ideas Book”. Dan Dare – Rogue Planet 1955-7 The above images were taken by David Buckley when we travelled to the British Science Museum to study W. …
Read More “1955 – Phant Walking Tank (Dan Dare) – Frank Hampson (British)”
The world's first concept for a powered exoskeleton ? We often forget that even the now bygone era of Steam power and locomotion was new and in its infancy, satirists looked at a future whereby the most absurd objects could be powered and animated. Locomotion – Walking by Steam, Riding by Steam, Flying by …
Read More “1830c – Walking by Steam – Robert Seymour (British)”
See Quester details and other references in David Buckley's website here. Quester was originally designed to be a micromouse maze solver, and later converted into a general purpose robot with added gripper (see above). David also has a reference to the history of Micromouse competitions here. For the original Micromouse competition, "The Amazing MicroMouse Maze …
Read More “1981 – Quester Micromouse – David Buckley (British)”