HISTORY OF

ROBOTICS
Caraig, Jan Edward C.
BsECE-511

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 What is a ROBOT?

• A robot can be defined as a programmable, self-controlled

device consisting of electronic, electrical, or mechanical units.
More generally, it is a machine that functions in the place of a
living agent. Robots are especially desirable for certain work
functions because, unlike humans, they never get tired; they
can endure physical conditions that are uncomfortable or even
dangerous; they can operate in airless conditions; they do not
get bored by repetition, and they cannot be distracted from the
task at hand (ThoughtCo. by Marvel Bellis, October 14, 2019).

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HISTORY OF ROBOTICS

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350 BC

The first known robot

was created around
400-350 BC by the
mathematician
Archita and was a
steam powered
pigeon.

Archytas, who constructed his bird out of wood and used

steam to power the movements of the robot.  

This bird was then suspended from a pivot bar and at one
point the bird managed to fly as much as 200 meters before
it ran out of steam.  This is not only the first known robot,
but was also one of the first recorded scientifically done
studies of how birds fly. 4
322 BC
The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote:
“If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own
accord, could do the work that befits it... then
there would be no need either of apprentices for
the master workers or of slaves for the lords.” It
was the first recorded reference to robots. 5
200BC

The Greek inventor and physicist Ctesibus of

Alexandria designs water clocks that have
movable figures on them.

Water clocks are a big breakthrough for

timepieces. Up until then the Greeks used hour
glasses that had to be turned over after all the
sand ran through. Ctesibus' invention changed
this because it measured time as a result of the
force of water falling through it at a constant
rate.

In general, the Greeks were fascinated with

automata of all kinds often using them in
theatre productions and religious ceremonies.

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1495

Leonardo Da Vinci designs a mechanical device that looks like an armoured

knight. The mechanisms inside "Leonardo's robot" are designed to make the
knight move as if there was a real person inside. Inventors in medieval times
often built machines like "Leonardo's robot" to amuse royalty.

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1738

Jacques de Vaucanson begins building automata in Grenoble,

France. He built three in all. His first was the flute player that
could play twelve songs. This was closely followed by his second
automaton that played a flute and a drum or tambourine, but by
far his third was the most famous of them all.

The duck was an example of Vaucanson's attempt at what he

called "moving anatomy", or modeling human or animal anatomy
with mechanics.“. The duck moved, quacked, flapped it's wings
and even ate and digested food.

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 1774

Pierre Jaquet-Droz was a Swiss watchmaker of

the late 18th century. He lived in Paris,
London, and Geneva, where he designed and
built animated dolls, or automata, to help his
firm sell watches and mechanical birds.

The Writer (made of 6000 pieces), The

Musician (2500 pieces) and The Draughtsman
(2000 pieces) were constructed between 1768
and 1774 by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-
Louis, and Jean Frederic Leschot.
Some consider these devices to be the oldest examples of the
computer. The Writer has an input device to set tabs that form a
programmable memory, 40 cams that represents the read only
program, and a quill pen for output. The work of Pierre Jaquet-Droz
predates that of Charles Babbage by decades.The automata of Jaquet-
Droz are also considered to be some of the finest examples of human
mechanical problem solving. Three particularly complex, and still
working and functional dolls are housed at the art and history museum
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in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
“L’Ecrivain” (The Writer 1775) : a unique automaton and a true piece
of art.

Its six-hundred-piece mechanism was extremely complex, much more

intricate than those of other automata. It could be set to write any text
of up to forty letters or symbols on a smooth piece of paper, as if on a
typewriter.
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 1801

Joseph Marie Jacquard, a silk-weaver,

invented an improved textile loom.

The Jacquard loom was the first machine to

use punched card. These punched cards
controlled the weaving, enabling an ordinary
workman to produce the most beautiful
patterns in a style previously accomplished
only with patience, skill, and hard work.

Jacquard’s work played an important role in the development of

the earliest programmable loom, which in turn played an important
role in the development of other programmable machines, such as
computers.

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 1822

Charles Babbage, (1791– 1871) was an

English mathematician, philosopher,
inventor, and mechanical engineer who
originated the concept of a programmable
computer.

In 1822 he demonstrates a prototype of his

"Difference Engine" to the Royal
Astronomical Society. He continued his
work by designing an even more ambitious
project “The Analytical Engine" that
reportedly was to use punch cards
inspired by Joseph Jacquard's invention.
However, during his lifetime he never produced a functional version of
either machine. Despite this shortcoming he is often heralded as the
"Father of the Computer" and his work lives on as the foundation for
the binary numbering system that is the basis of modern computers.
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In 1985, the London Science Museum launched a project to
build a complete Babbage Engine to original designs to
explore the practical viability of Babbage’s schemes. The
Engine chosen was Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2
designed between 1847 and 1849. The calculating section
of the Engine, which weighs 2.6 tonnes and consists of
4,000 separate parts, was completed and working in
November 1991, one month before the 200th anniversary of
Babbage's birth. 13
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 1847
As the inventor of Boolean Algebra, the
basis of Boolean Logic and hence
modern digital computer logic, George
Boole is regarded in hindsight as a
founder of the field of computer science.

Boole once said ‘.. no general method for

the solution of questions in the theory of
probabilities can be established which
does not explicitly recognise ... those
universal laws of thought which are the
basis of all reasoning.’

Born in Lincolnshire, England he is

buried in Ballintemple, Co. Cork having
served as the first Professor of
Mathematics in Queens College Cork
from 1849.
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1898
Nikola Tesla, the legend of popular culture,
inventor of AC current, grandfather of radio, radar
and MRIs, invented and tested the world's first
remote control weapon in 1898.

Today cruise missiles, unmanned air vehicles

(UAVs), remote-control tracked vehicles and
unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) have
revolutionized the defense industry. These
robotic warriors are in daily use in Iraq,
Afghanistan and other places. Today’s military
gurus predict that within a generation
weaponized robots will largely replace live pilots,
sailors and soldiers sent into harms' way on the
battlefields of tomorrow. Few of the play station
generation that will control these vehicles from
afar know the name of the man who is
responsible for giving birth to the automated
warrior, Nikola Tesla.
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In 1898, six years before the Wright brothers flew, Tesla designed and built a
pair of radio controlled boats. The craft were constructed of iron, powered by a
electric battery of his own design, and equipped with a radio-mechanical
receiver that accepted commands from a wireless transmitter. The boats were
equipped with a large whip antenna, a modular space that could carry a charge,
diving rudders, a prop and electric running lights that could all be remotely
controlled. Tesla demonstrated the vessels to a shocked crowd in an indoor
pool at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The crowd was amazed how
Tesla, always a showman, maneuvered his six-foot-long boat in patterns
through the water, and then stopped and started the craft. He even had the
forethought to equip his boats with a crude logic gate which prevented them
from being taken over by another transmitter other than his own. The craft
alarmed those in the crowd who saw it and who claimed it to be everything
from magic and telepathy to being piloted by a trained monkey hidden inside.
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1921

R.U.R., often subtitled Rossum's

Universal Robots is a science fiction
play in the Czech language by Karel
Čapek. It premiered in 1921 and is
noted for introducing the term "robot".

The play begins in a factory that makes

artificial people called "robots." Unlike
the modern usage of the term, these
creatures are closer to the modern
idea of androids or even clones, as
they can be mistaken for humans and
can think for themselves. They seem
happy to work for humans, although
that changes and a hostile robot
rebellion leads to the extinction of the
human race.

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The word robot comes from the word
“robota” meaning literally self labor,
and, figuratively, "drudgery" or "hard
work" in Czech, Slovak and Polish.

While it is frequently thought that

Karel was the originator of the word,
he wrote a short letter in reference to
an article in the Oxford English
Dictionary etymology in which he
named his brother, painter and writer
Josef Čapek, as its actual inventor.

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1926

Fritz Lang's movie "Metropolis"

is released.

"Maria" the female robot in the

film is the first robot to be
projected on the silver screen.

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 1936
Alan Mathison Turing was an English
mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and
computer scientist. He was highly influential in
the development of computer science,
providing a formalisation of the concept of the
algorithm and computation with the Turing
machine, which played a significant role in the
creation of the modern computer.
Turing machines, first described by him in
1936, are simple abstract computational
devices intended to help investigate the extent
and limitations of what can be computed.

Turing, writing before the invention of the modern digital computer,

was interested in the question of what it means to be computable. A
task is computable if one can specify a sequence of instructions
which when followed will result in the completion of the task. Such a
set of instructions is called an effective procedure, or algorithm, for
the task. 22
 1940
Issac Asimov produces a series of short stories
about robots starting with "A Strange
Playfellow" (later renamed "Robbie") for Super
Science Stories magazine. The story is about a
robot and its affection for a child that it is bound
to protect. Over the next 10 years he produces
more stories about robots that are eventually
recompiled into the volume "I, Robot" in 1950.
Asimov is generally credited with the
popularization of the term "Robotics" which was
first mentioned in his story "Runaround" in 1942.
Issac Asimov's most important contribution to
the history of the robot is the creation of his
Three Laws of Robotics:

1.A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a
human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where
such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection
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does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
 1950
Alan Turing publishes Computing
Machinery and Intelligence in which he
proposes a test to determine whether or
not a machine has gained the power to
think for itself. It becomes known as the
"Turing Test". The Turing test is a test of a
machine's ability to exhibit intelligent
behavior. A human judge engages in a
natural language conversation with one
human and one machine, each of which
tries to appear human.

All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot
reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to
have passed the test. In order to test the machine's intelligence
rather than its ability to render words into audio, the conversation
is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and
screen.
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1960
The first industrial arm robot, the Unimate”
is introduced. It is designed to complete
repetitive or dangerous tasks on a General
Motors assembly line.

Unimate was the first industrial robot,

which worked on a General Motors
assembly line in New Jersey, in 1961. It was
created by George Devol in the 1950s using
his original patents. Devol, together with
Joseph Engelberger, started Unimation the
world's first robot manufacturing company.

The machine undertook the job of

transporting die castings from an assembly
line and welding these parts on auto bodies
—a dangerous task for workers, who might
be poisoned by exhaust gas or lose a limb if
they were not careful. 25
1966
The Stanford Research Institute (later to be
known as SRI Technology) created
“Shakey” the first mobile robot to know and
react to its own actions.
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.
Due to its nature, the project combined
research in robotics, computer vision, and
natural language processing.
Because of this, it was the first project that
melded logical reasoning and physical 26
action.
1969
Victor Scheinman, a Mechanical Engineering student working in the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) creates the Stanford Arm. The
arm's design becomes a standard and is still influencing the design of
robot arms today.

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1977
Star Wars is released. George Lucas'
movie about a universe governed by the
force introduces watchers to R2-D2 and
C-3PO.

The movie creates the strongest image of

a human future with robots since the
1960's and inspires a generation of
researchers.

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1986
Honda begins a robot research program that
starts with the premise:
“the robots should coexist and cooperate with
human beings, by doing what a person cannot
do and by cultivating a new dimension in
mobility to ultimately benefit society."

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1989
A walking robot named Genghis is unveiled by the
Mobile Robots Group at MIT. It becomes known for the
way it walks, popularly referred to as the "Genghis
gait". Genghis was built at MIT to demonstrate the
efficacy of using numerous small, light, mobile robots
to explore the Martian surface.

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1996
Honda debuts the P3, shown second from right above, the fruit of its
decade long effort to build a humanoid robot. The P-series is a
chronological progression of prototype humanoid robots as
developed by Honda. The research conducted allowed the eventual
creation of ASIMO, pictured last on the right above.

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1997
The NASA Pathfinder Mission
lands on Mars. Its robotic rover
Sojourner, rolls down a ramp and
onto Martian soil in early July. It
broadcast data from the Martian
surface until September.

After a few days on the Martian

surface the NASA controllers
turned on Sojourner's hazard
avoidance system and asked it to
start making some of its own
decisions. This hazard avoidance
system set the rover apart from all
other machines that have explored
space. Sojourner made trips
between designated points without
the benefit of detailed information
to warn it of obstacles along 32the
way.
1998
Tiger Electronics introduces the Furby into
the Christmas toy market.
It quickly becomes "the toy" to get for the
season.
Using a variety of sensors this "animatronic
pet" can react to its environment and
communicate using over 800 phrases in
English and their own language "Furbish".

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1998

LEGO releases their first Robotics

Invention SystemTM 1.0.
LEGO names the product line
MINDSTORMS after Seymour Papert's
seminal work ‘Mindstorms: Children,
Computers, and Powerful Ideas’
published in 1980.
In this book, papert advocates
constructionism, or learning through
doing.

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2000
Honda debuts the 12th version, since
1986, of it’s humanoid robot - ASIMO.

The name is an acronym for "Advanced

Step in Innovative MObility“ rather than
a reference to Isaac Asimov.
The robot has 7 DOF (Degrees of
freedom) in each arm — two joints of 3
DOF, shoulder and wrist, giving "Six
degrees of freedom" and 1 DOF at the
elbow; 6 DOF in each leg — 3 DOF at
the crotch, 2 DOF at the ankle and 1
DOF at the knee; and 3 DOF in the neck
joint.
The hands have 2 DOF — 1 DOF in each
thumb and 1 in each finger.
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This gives a total of 34 DOF in all joints
2001

In August, the FDA clears the

CyberKnife to treat tumours
anywhere in the body.
The CyberKnife system is a method
of delivering radio therapy, with the
intention of targeting treatment more
accurately than standard radio
therapy.
Over 150 centres, featuring several
generations of equipment, offer
treatment around the world.

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2004

Jan 4th - The NASA robot rover

“Spirit” lands on Mars.
Jan 23rd, the second rover,
“Opportunity” safely lands on the
meridium planum on Mars.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover
Mission (MER) is an ongoing robotic
space mission involving the two
rovers.
The mission's scientific objective was
to search for and characterise a wide
range of rocks and soils that hold
clues to past water activity on Mars.

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 2007
Since 2006, awards have been given
by Japan’s Ministry of Economy,
Trade & Industry for ‘Robot of the
Year’.
The 2007 winner was the work-
horse, industrial robot from Fanuc
Ltd. called M-430iA.
This multi-axis, greaseless (and
therefore sanitary) robot is part of a
food and pharmaceutical handling
system.

This robot can work non-stop, 24 hours a day, accurately picking up

120 items per minute as they roll down a conveyor belt.
It employs the rapidly developing technology of Machine Vision to
pick the items regardless of their position on the conveyor.

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2008

The 2008 winner was the Takara

Tomy’s Omnibot 17μ i-SOBOT.
The i-SOBOT is the world’s
smallest humanoid that’s aimed at
a mass market.
The Japanese government praised
its low price of around $350 and its
advanced technology.

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2009
The 2009 winner was the Omni Zero 1000 transformer robot.
The Omni Zero 1000 can walk and turn itself into a car and roll along
the floor.
Originally made for Robot One, a robot competition held twice a year,
the robot can also transform itself into various shapes.
When in walking mode, the robot can open its head section to reveal a
seat and carry a human occupant or more often its creator Takeshi
Maeda.
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2014

Pepper, the robot, was showcased

in Softbank’s mobile stores in
Japan and has become introduced
in Renault dealerships across
France.
It is the world’s first robot that
capable of recognizing human
emotions. Pepper is social,
capable of having conversations
with people, giving them directions
and even dancing with them

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“UBTECH’s Walker” robot was revealed at CES 2019 and is due to be
released in the next 18 months. Walker is an agile, intelligent, bipedal
humanoid robot. Standing at 1.45m tall, the new version of walker is
more advanced than ever, it is able to interact with people and even
has the ability to walk smoothly and quickly and to grasp and
manipulate objects.

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What does the future hold for robotics? The general trend
for computers seems to be faster processing speed, greater
memory capacity and many more technological skills. One
would assume that the robots of the future would become
closer and closer to the decision-making ability of humans
and also more independent.

BUT WHAT IF ROBOTS CAN LEARN TO HATE AND WE CAN

NOT CONTROL IT? IT WILL BE A DISASTER FOR HUMATY.

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Thank You 

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