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The concept of robotics dates back to ancient Greece, with examples such as mechanical servants of the god Hephaestus and Architas’ steam-powered bird. The Industrial Revolution saw automation in cloth production and Charles Babbage’s prototype of the “Difference Engine”. The modern era began in 1959 with the founding of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, and further developments included the creation of the first industrial robot and the Voyager probes. Honda’s ASIMO prototype represented progress in humanoid robotics, with advanced capabilities by 2008.
The concept of robotics dates back at least to the ancient Greeks. Greek mythology had at least one instance of robots, as mechanical servants of the Greek god of technology, fire and the forge, Hephaestus. In another Greek myth, Pygmalion, a master sculptor from Cyprus, makes a statue called Galatea come to life. Around 350 BC, a brilliant Greek mathematician, Architas, built a mechanical bird, “the pigeon”, which could fly through the air with the power of steam. This is one of the earliest known milestones in the development of the field, as well as the first registered model aircraft.
Many centuries later, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution broke out. This was fueled by steam power and extensive automation, particularly in cloth production. The automated loom, invented in 1801, worked using punched card input. A couple of decades later, in 1822, Charles Babbage presented a prototype of his “Difference Engine” to the Royal Astronomical Society in Great Britain. Inspired by the automated loom, this machine also worked based on punched cards, but Babbage died before a production model could be built. Today, Babbage is known as the “Father of Computing” and all robots use computers for their “brains”.
The modern era of robotics began around 1959, when John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. A couple of years later, Heinrich Erst created the first modern robotic hand, and in 1962 Unimate, the first industrial robot, was created to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks on the General Motors assembly line. In 1966, the Stanford Research Institute created Shakey, the first mobile robot that knew and reacted to its own actions. In 1967, Richard Greenblatt wrote MacHack, the first chess program, in reaction to an article by Herbert Dreyfuss who claimed that a computer would never beat him at chess.
The following decades saw further developments in robotics. Stanford University built the Stanford dolly, an intelligent line follower, in 1970, and in 1974, Victor Scheinman created the Silver Arm, an arm capable of assembling machines from small parts using touch sensors. Further progress occurred in 1977 when NASA launched the highly automated Voyager probes to explore the outer solar system.
The robotics avant-garde has continued to perfect the speed and accuracy of robotic manipulators while creating prototypes of humanoid robots. In 1986, Honda started a humanoid robotics program, represented by the ASIMO prototype, which had 11 versions from 1986 to 2008. By 2008, the robot had advanced to the point where it was able to follow a human being by holding hands, recognize the its environment, distinguish sounds and observe moving objects.
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