ROBOTS

ROBOTS

             

 

 

Walter creates the first electronic autonomous robot

    Created by united states-born neurophysiologist and invented Dr. William Grey Walter (1910-1977), the tortoise robots were remarkable in their ability to mimic lifelike behavior. These experimental robots incorporated sensor for light and touch, as well as motor for propulsion and steering, and a two-vacuum tube (valve) along “computer”

   Robots, in one guise or another, had been suggested as far as 1495, when Leonardo Da Vinci created his mechanical knight robot. However the first significant robot prototypes, build in 1948, were a pair of tortoise like robots named Elmer and Elsie.

    

   With the aid of simple circuitry, these electromechanical, three wheeled robots were capable of phototaxis (an automatic movement towards or away from light), could thus find their own way to a recharging station when they ran low on “food” a precursor of the technique used in popular Sony Aibo robot dogs some sixty year later. Using the combination of light travel and motor power setting four modes of operation were possible. This produced the variety of unique behavior pattern in tortoise. In one experiment, Dr. Walter placed a light on the front of a tortoise and watched as the robot considered itself in mirror.

  
   Because of their speculative, exploratory tendencies, Dr. Walter called his tortoise “Mechanical Speculatrix. “Designed to aid the study and testing of theories of behavior arising from the neutral interconnection, these small robots with reflexes were hugely influential in the birth and development of the science of cybernetics and robotics

A photoreceptor allowed the “tortoise“ to approach moderate light but made it avoid bright illumination