a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
pertaining to Dr. W. Grey Walter
scanning – a form of behavior (sniffing, looking, listening, palpating) by which a sensory stimulus is sought or expected, and which is guided by an expectancy of input instead of a future internal state (goal). The search must be broad in the sense of looking everywhere, but narrow in the sense of being specific as …
Read More “M. speculatrix – Scanning: It makes all the difference”
This copy of a letter from 1957 describes the first "Mechanical Animal" built by the Sutherland brothers, Bert and Ivan. Here’s a transcript of the letter sent from Ivan E. Sutherland to Grey Walter in 1957: Nov 10. [IES to WGW] “Dear Sir: Early last month I had sent to you two copies of …
In my research for all things Grey Walter and his tortoises, I have uncovered five (5) video clips available on the internet. Of the five, I have downloaded four of them, the 5th has been allusive for some time, having not been able to re-locate it again after spending many hours trying. It is not …
In late 1951, Paul-Alain Amouriq, a Frenchman then aged 17, built a cybernetic tortoise inspired by Grey Walter's as published in a French science magazine Science et Vie (February 1951). Several years later Science et Vie became aware of Amouriq's tortue, and Pierre de Latil visited him and the subsequent article was published in the March …
Read More “1951 – La Tortue Cybernetique (Cybernetic Tortoise) – Paul-Alain Amouriq (French)”
Who is Ivan E. Sutherland? Ivan was born in 1938, Nebraska, USA and is a computer pioneer, inventing Sketchpad, being the first what we now call a Graphical User Interface (GUI). He also built a walking machine, but that will be the subject to another post later. As an under-graduate student, Ivan, with his elder brother …
Read More “W. Grey Walter, Edmund C. Berkeley, Ivan E. Sutherland and the Tortoise”