a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
1846 – Walking Wheel by James Boydell A dreadnaught wheel is a wheel with articulated rails attached at the rim to provide a firm footing for the wheel to roll over, they have also been known as endless railway wheels when fitted to road locomotives, and were commonly fitted to steam traction engines. Bottrill's "Big …
1973 – "Robbie" the Pulpit Robot by the Rev. Ron Mackenzie ROBOT IN THE PULPIT Sunday school with a difference: Helping the Reverend Ron Mackenzie is Robbie, the robot he designed and built himself 8 years ago. Robbie was built to help attract children to church and he has proved to be an enormous success. …
Read More “1973 – “Robbie” the Pulpit Robot – Rev. Ron Mackenzie (British)”
EVA Pod – The EVA Pod is a fictional spacecraft used for extra-vehicular activity seen in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Jupiter spacecraft Discovery One carries three of these small, one-man maintenance vehicles. [EVA – Extra-Vehicular Activity i.e. activity outside of the prime space vehicle.] Film stage. Detail of manipulator arms. Illustrations by …
Read More “1965-8 – Space Pod – 2001: A Space Odyssey – Clarke (British) / Kubrick (American)”
An autonomous Warden building, servicing and maintaining Daedalus. Above image source: Robots, by Peter Marsh, 1985 Autonomy and the Interstellar Probe – Sourced from here. by Paul Gilster on March 19, 2013 daedalus_final_report …..The span between the creation of the Daedalus design in the 1970s and today covers the development of the personal computer and …
Read More “1973-8 – Daedalus ‘Wardens’ (Concept) – Bond, Martin, Grant et al (British)”
"Working model of a table-clearing robot [Mk 2] designed to test the present-day feasibility of principles required for the house-working robot and other machines. The model has one 'sight' and two 'touch' sensors which enable the mechanical arm to pick up objects and place them on the rotating, clearing tray on top of the machine." …
Read More “1962 – Table-Clearing Robot – Meredith Thring (Australian/British)”