a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
FRANKEN The original Franken maze solver was designed and built by Bert and Ivan Sutherland. I suspect it was built for Edmund C. Berkeley. Berkeley , it appears, had used the early version as a prototype, and engaged his other associates, namely Bob Jensen, Juli Skalski and Stan Skalski in drawing up a revised document suitable for …
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1983 "Trojan Cockroach", a Six-Legged Hydraulic Walker by Ivan Sutherland. The Sutherland Walker was a six-legged all-terrain robotic designed by Sutherland Sproull Associates with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University under contract to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The robot used a gasoline motor to power its legs and required a driver …
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The diagrammatic view of the 1950-1 Maze-solving Mouse built by Claude A. Shannon. Claude Shannon knew Edmund C. Berkeley quite well. Berkeley had two young associates working part-time with him on his early robots, by the names of Ivan and Bert Sutherland. Ivan was soon to have Claude Shannon as his Thesis supervisor. Berkeley was keen …
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Ivan Sutherland with M. Versatilis. Source: Carnegie Mellon University Archives Machina Versatilis , pictured above and below, was so named due to the versatile modular plug-in boards. M. Versatilis was the final of three models built, and at least two of this model were supposedly built. The first version, see blog post here, was originally built in …
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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 …