it is a useful short history of robotics

1. Unimate, the first
industrial robot, began to
work at General Motors.
Obeying step-by-step
commands stored on a
magnetic drum, the
4.000 pound arm
transported and
assembled hot pieces of
die-cast metal from an
assembly line to the
auto bodies.
This was a dangerous
task for workers, who
might be poisoned by
exhaust gas or lose a
limb if they were not
careful

2. Over fifty years ago W. Grey
Walter started building three
wheeled, turtle like, mobile
robotic vehicles. These
vehicles had a light sensor,
touch sensor, propulsion
motor, steering motor.
He called his creation
Machina Speculatrix .
The Adam and Eve of his
robots were named Elmer
and Elsie ( ELectro
MEchanical Robots, Light
Sensitive. )
( here is a photo of Elsie
without her shell )

3. The Johns Hopkins Beast
was an early pre-robot, built
in the 1960s at the Johns
Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory. The
machine had a rudimentary
intelligence and the ability
to survive on its own. As it
wandered through the white
halls of the laboratory, it
would seek black wall
outlets. When it found one it
would plug in and recharge.

4. Shakey the Robot
was the first general-
purpose mobile robot
to be able to reason
about its own
actions. While other
robots would have to
be instructed on
each individual step
of completing a
larger task, Shakey
could analyze the
command and break
it down into basic
chunks by itself

5. The "Stanford Cart" and
"Shakey" were the first
mobile robots controlled
by computers .
The Cart followed
smudgy white lines using
adaptation and prediction
methods far more
complex than Elsie's or
the Beast's.