The history of robots date at least as far back as ancient myths and legends.

Digitally
controlled Industrial robots and robots making use of Artificial intelligence have been
built since the 1960s.

Contents [hide]

 1 Robotics in Antiquity
 2 1400 to 1800
 3 1801 to 1900
 4 1901 to 1950
 5 1951 to 2000
o 5.1 1951 to 1960
o 5.2 1961 to 1970
o 5.3 1971 to 1980
o 5.4 1981 to 1990
o 5.5 1991 to 2000
o 5.6 2001 to the present
 6 Notes
 7 References
 8 Further reading

Robotics in Antiquity

Main article: Automaton

Likely fictional the Iliad illustrates the concept of robotics by stating that the god
Hephaestus made talking mechanical handmaidens out of gold. [1] Around 400 BC,
Archytas of Tarentum is reputed to have built a mechanical pigeon, possibly powered by
steam, capable of flying. Not only representing one of the earliest works in the field of
robotics, the wooden pigeon was also an early study of flight. [2][3] Philosophers (notably
Aristotle in 322 BC) have also dreamed of automatons and tools capable of working
independently of people as an idea for bringing about human equality by making
possible the abolition of slavery.[2]

In ancient China, a curious account on automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the
3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between
King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an
'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of
his mechanical handiwork. [4]

Early water clocks, or clepsydra, are sometimes grouped in with the beginning of
robotics. It was common to attempt to make such clocks automatic (such as a clepsydra
by Ctesibius),[5] or to decorate them with complicated astrological designs (popular in
the Eastern world).[6] Of particular interest in China, these astrological clocks led to
extremely complex works such as Su Song's clock tower in 1088 AD, which featured
moving mannequins, among other devices. [7]

1400 to 1800

Interest in automata was either mostly non-existent in medieval Europe, or unrecorded.

[2][3][8]
Oriental automata did, however, find their way into the imaginary worlds of
medieval literature. For instance, the Middle Dutch tale Roman van Walewein ("The
Romance of Walewein", early 13th century) describes mechanical birds and angels
producing sound by means of systems of pipes.[9][10]

In 1495, Leonardo Da Vinci designed a humanoid automaton in knight's armor (see

Leonardo's robot) to entertain, but it is not known if the design was ever built. [2] Between
1500 and 1800, many automatons were built including ones capable of acting, drawing,
flying, and playing music;[3] several mechanical calculators were also built in this time
period, some of the most famous ones are Wilhelm Schickard's "Calculating Clock",
Blaise Pascal's "Pascaline", and the "Liebniz Stepped Drum", by Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz.[11] In 1533, Johannes Müller von Königsberg created an automaton eagle and
fly made of iron; both could fly.[3] John Dee is also famous for creating a wooden beetle,
capable of flying.[3]

Some of the most famous works of the period were created by Jacques de Vaucanson
in 1737, including an automaton flute player, tambourine player, and his most famous
work, "The Digesting Duck". Vaucanson's duck was capable of imitating a real duck by
flapping its wings (over 400 parts were in each of the wings alone), eat grain, digest it,
and defecate; the duck was powered by weights. [12]

John Kay invented his "flying shuttle" in 1733, and the "Spinning Jenny" was invented in
1764 by James Hargreaves, each radically increasing the speed of production in the
weaving and spinning industries respectively.[13][14] The Spinning Jenny is hand-powered
and requires a skilled operator; Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule first developed in
1779 is a fully automated power driven spinning machine capable of spinning hundreds
of threads at once.

Richard Arkwright built a water powered weaving machine, and factory around it in
1781, starting the Industrial Revolution.[15] By 1800, cloth production was completely
automated.[8] With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the idea of automata began to
be applied to industry, as cost and time saving devices.

1801 to 1900

Improvements in the weaving industry had led to large amounts of automation, and the
idea of programmable machines became popular with Charles Babbage's Analytical
Engine[3] Babbage conceived his Analytical Engine as a replacement for his
uncompleted Difference Engine; this larger, more complex device would be able to
perform multiple operations, and would be operated by punch cards. Construction of the
Analytical Engine was never completed; work was begun in 1833. [16] However, Ada
Lovelace's work on the project has resulted in her being credited as the first computer
programmer.

In 1837, the story of the Golem of Prague, a humanoid artificial intelligence activated by
inscribing Hebrew letters on its forehead, based on Jewish folklore, was created by
Jewish German writer Berthold Auerbach for his novel Spinoza.

George Boole invented a new type of symbolic logic in 1847 instrumental to the creation
of computers and robots.[3]

1901 to 1950

See also: history of computing hardware

The word robot was popularized by Czech author Karel Capek in his 1921 play R.U.R.
(Rossum's Universal Robots). According to Karel, his brother Josef was the actual
inventor of the word "robot", creating the word from the Czech word "robota", meaning
servitude.[17] In 1927, Fritz Lang's Metropolis was released; the Maschinenmensch
(“machine-human”), a gynoid humanoid robot, also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix",
or the "Maria impersonator" (played by German actress Brigitte Helm), was the first
robot ever to be depicted on film.[2] The world's first actual robot, a humanoid named
Televox operated through the telephone system, was constructed in the United States
in 1927. In 1928, Makoto Nishimura produced Japan's first robot, Gakutensoku.[18]

In his 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the

Entscheidungsproblem"[19] (submitted on 28 May 1936), Turing reformulated Kurt
Gödel's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal
arithmetic-based formal language with what are now called Turing machines, formal and
simple devices. He proved that some such machine would be capable of performing any
conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm, thus
creating the basis for what is now called computer science.

Many robots were constructed before the dawn of computer-controlled

servomechanisms, for the public relations purposes of major firms. Electro appeared in
Westinghouse's pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Some were built in
between such major public gatherings, such as Garco, made by Garrett AiResearch in
the 1950s. These were essentially machines that could perform a few stunts, like the
automatons of the eighteenth century.

Vannevar Bush created the first differential analyzer at the Massachusetts Institute Of
Technology (MIT). Known as the Differential Analyzer, the computer could solve
differential equations.[20] 1940 brought about the creation of two electrical computers,
John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry's Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC).

Ultimately, ideas from ABC were stolen for ENIAC.[21]

In 1941 and 1942, Isaac Asimov formulated the Three Laws of Robotics, and in the
process of doing so, coined the word "robotics".

In the UK, the Robinson machine was designed for the British war effort in cracking
Enigma messages.[22] This was done at the British code-breaking establishment at
Bletchley Park; Ultra is the name for the intelligence so received.[21][22] Robinson was
superseded by Colossus, which was built in 1943 to decode FISH messages by the
British group Ultra; it was designed by Tommy Flowers and was 100 to 1000 times
faster than Robinson, and was the first fully electronic computer. [23] The Bletchley
machines were kept secret for decades, and so do not appear in histories of computing
written until recently. After the war, Tommy Flowers joined the team that built the early
Manchester computers.

In Germany, Konrad Zuse built the first fully programmable digital computer in the world
(the Z3) in 1941; it would later be destroyed in 1944. [24] Zuse was also known for
building the first binary computer from 1936 to 1938, called the Z1; he also built the Z4,
his only machine to survive World War II.[24]

The first American programmable computer was completed in 1944 by Howard Aiken
and Grace Hopper. The Mark I (as it was called) ran computations for the US Navy until
1959.[25] ENIAC was built in 1946 and gained fame because of its reliability, speed, and
versatility. John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly spent 3 years building ENIAC,
which weighed over 60,000 lbs.[26]

In 1948, Norbert Weiner formulated the principles of cybernetics, the basis of practical
robotics.

The first Turtles (Elmo and Elsie) were created by pioneer roboticist William Grey Walter
in 1949.[3]

The first working digital computer to be sold was Zuse's Z4 in Germany; the fully
electronic US BINAC was sold twelve months earlier in September 1949 but it never
worked reliably at the customer's site due to mishandling in transit. Second was the
UK's Ferranti Mark 1 delivered in February 1951, the first software programmable digital
electronic computer to be sold that worked upon delivery. It was based on the world's
first software programmable digital electronic computer, Manchester's SSME of 1948.

In 1950, UNIVAC I (also by Eckert and Mauchley) handled the US Census results; it
was the third commercially marketed computer that worked on delivery (in December
1951).[27]

The Turing test is proposed by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and
Intelligence, which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can
machines think?'"

1951 to 2000
 This section may require copy-editing.

After 1950, computers (and robotics), began to rapidly increase in both complexity and
numbers as the technology needed to make the devices became easier to produce.

1951 to 1960

In 1951, William Shockley invented the junction transistor, which was announced at a
press conference on July 4, 1951. Shockley obtained a patent for this invention on
September 25, 1951.

In 1951, LEO became operational in the UK. It was built by Lyons for its own use: this
was the world's first software programmable digital electronic computer for commercial
applications, exploiting the US development of mercury delay line memory, and built
with the support of the Cambridge EDSAC project. LEO was used for commercial work
running business application programs, the first of which was rolled out 17 November
1951.

Eckert and Mauchly completed EDVAC in 1951. An improvement on ENIAC and

UNIVAC, EDVAC used mercury delay lines to store data, making it the USA's first
software stored program computer.[28] In 1952, the television network CBS correctly
predicted the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president using UNIVAC. In 1952
IBM announced its 701 model computer, marketed towards scientific use, it was
designed by Nathaniel Rochester.[29] Stanislaw Ulam and physicist Paul Stein converted
MANIAC I (used for solving calculations involved in creating the hydrogen bomb) to play
a modified game of chess in 1956; it was the first computer to beat a human in a game
of chess.[30] The term "Artificial Intelligence was created at a conference held at
Dartmouth College in 1956.[31] Alan Newell, J. C. Shaw, and Herbert Simon pioneered
the newly created artificial intelligence field with the Logic Theory Machine (1956), and
the General Problem Solver in 1957.[32] In 1958, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky
started the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab with $50,000. [33] John McCarthy also created
LISP in the summer of 1958, a programming language still important in artificial
intelligence research.[34] Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the integrated circuit or
"chip" in 1959; the inventors worked independent of each other. This development
eventually revolutionized computers by affecting both the size and speed. [35]

1961 to 1970

Unimate, the first industrial robot ever created began work on the General Motors
assembly line in 1961; conceived of in 1954 by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger
over lunch; Unimate was made by the company Unimation. Unimate is remembered as
the first industrial robot.[36] In 1962 John McCarthy founded the Stanford Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University.[37] The Rancho Arm was developed as a
robotic arm to help handicapped patients at the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in
Downey, California; this computer controlled arm was bought by Stanford University in
1963.[38] IBM announced its IBM System/360 in 1964. The system was heralded as
being more powerful, faster, and more capable than its predecessors. [39] In 1965,
Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel in 1968, develops what will become known as
Moore's Law; the idea that the number of components capable of being built onto a chip
will double every two years.[40] The same year, doctoral student Edward Feigenbaum,
geneticist and biochemist Joshua Lederberg, and Bruce Buchanan (who held a degree
in philosophy) begin work on the DENDRAL, an expert system designed to work in the
field of organic chemistry.[41] Feigenbaum also founded the Heuristic Programming
Project in 1965, it later became the Stanford Knowledge Systems Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory.[8] The program Mac Hack was also written in 1966; it beat artificial
intelligence critic Hubert Dreyfus in a game of chess. The program was created by
Richard Greenblatt.[42] Seymour Papert created the Logo programming language in
1967. It was designed as an educational programming language. [43] The film 2001: A
Space Odyssey was released in 1968; the movie prominently features HAL 9000, a
malevolent artificial intelligence unit which controls a spacecraft. [44] Marvin Minsky
created the Tentacle Arm in 1968; the arm was computer controlled and its 12 joints
were powered by hydraulics.[38] Mechanical Engineering student Victor Scheinman
created the Stanford Arm in 1969; the Stanford Arm is recognized as the first electronic
computer controlled robotic arm (Unimate's instructions were stored on a magnetic
drum).[38] The first floppy disc was released in 1970; it was eight inches in diameter and
read-only.[45] The first mobile robot capable of reasoning about its surroundings, Shakey
was built in 1970 by the Stanford Research Institute. Shakey combined multiple sensor
inputs, including TV cameras, laser rangefinders, and "bump sensors" to navigate.[38] In
the winter of 1970, the Soviet Union explores the surface of the moon with the lunar
vehicle Lunokhod 1, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.

1971 to 1980

The first microprocessor, called the 4004 was created by Ted Hoff at Intel in 1971.
Measuring 1/8th of an inch by 1/16th of an inch, the chip itself was more powerful than
ENIAC.[46] Artificial intelligence critic Hubert Dreyfuss published his influential book
"What Computers cannot Do" in 1972. [47] Douglas Trumbull's "Silent Running" was
released in 1972; the movie was notable for the three robot co-stars, named Huey,
Dewey, and Louie.[48] Released in 1973 was the logic based programming language
PROLOG; this logic based language becomes important in the field of artificial
intelligence.[49] Freddy and Freddy II, both built in the United Kingdom, were robots
capable of assembling wooden blocks in a period of several hours. [50] German based
company KUKA built the world's first industrial robot with six electromechanically driven
axes, known as FAMULUS.[51] In 1974, David Silver designed The Silver Arm; the Silver
Arm was capable of fine movements replicating human hands. Feedback was provided
by touch and pressure sensors and analyzed by a computer.[38] MYCIN, an expert
system developed to study decisions and prescriptions relating to blood infections.
MYCIN was written in Lisp.[52] Marvin Minsky published his landmark paper "A
Framework for Representing Knowledge" on artificial intelligence. [53] By 1975, four
expert systems relating to medicine had been created; PIP, MYCIN, CASNET, and
Internist.[8] 1975: more than 5,000 computers were sold in the United States, and the
first personal computer was introduced.[8] The Kurzweil Reading Machine (invented by
Raymond Kurzweil), intended to help the blind, was released in 1976. Capable of
recognizing characters, the machine formulated pronunciation based on programmed
rules.[54] Based on studies of flexible objects in nature (such as elephant trunks and the
vertebrae of snakes), Shigeo Hirose designed the Soft Gripper in 1976 the gripper was
capable of conforming to the object it was grasping. [38] The knowledge based system
Automated Mathematician was presented by Douglas Lenat in 1976 as part of his
doctoral dissertation. Automated Mathematician began with a knowledge of 110
concepts and rediscovered many mathematical principles; Automated Mathematician
was written in Lisp.[55] Joseph Weizenbaum (creator of ELIZA, a program capable of
simulating a Rogerian physcotherapist) published Computer Power and Human
Reason, presenting an argument against the creation of artificial intelligence. [56] Steven
Jobs and Stephen Wozniak created the Apple Computer in 1977, and released the
Apple II.[57] George Lucas' movie Star Wars was also released in 1977. Star Wars
featured two robots; an android named C-3PO and R2-D2, both of which become
extremely iconic as robots.[58][59] Voyagers 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 to explore the
solar system. The 30 year old robotic space probes continue to transmit data back to
earth and are approaching the heliopause and the interstellar medium.[60] The SCARA,
Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm, was created in 1978 as an efficient, 4-axis
robotic arm. Best used for picking up parts and placing them in another location, the
SCARA was introduced to assembly lines in 1981.[61] XCON, an expert system designed
to customize orders for industrial use, was released in 1979. [62] The Stanford Cart
successfully crossed a room full of chairs in 1979. The Stanford Cart relied primarily on
stereo vision to navigate and determine distances.[38] The Robotics Institute at Carnegie
Mellon University was founded in 1979 by Raj Reddy.[63]

1981 to 1990

Takeo Kanade created the first "direct drive arm" in 1981. The first of its kind, the arm's
motors were contained within the robot itself, eliminating long transmissions. [64] IBM
released its first personal computer (PC) in 1981; the name of the computer was
responsible for popularizing the term "personal computer". [65] Prospector a "computer-
based consultation program for mineral exploration", [66] created in 1976, discovered an
unknown deposit of molybdenum in Washington state. The expert system had been
updated annually since its creation.[67] The Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project
(FGCS) was started in 1982. Its goals were knowledge based information processing
and massive parallelism in a supercomputer, artificial intelligence like system. [68] Cyc, a
project to create a database of common sense for artificial intelligence, was started in
1984 by Douglas Leant. The program attempts to deal with ambiguity in language, and
is still underway.[69] The first program to publish a book, the expert system Racter,
programmed by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter, wrote the book "The
Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" in 1983. It is now thought that a system of
complex templates were used.[70] In 1984 Wabot-2 was revealed; capable of playing the
organ, Wabot-2 had 10 fingers and two feet. Wabot-2 was able to read a score of music
and accompany a person.[71] In 1985, Kawasaki Heavy Industries' license agreement
with Unimation was terminated; Kawasaki began to produce its own robots. Their first
robot was released one year later.[72] By 1986, artificial intelligence revenue was about
$1 billion US dollars. Chess playing programs HiTech and Deep Thought defeated
chess masters in 1989. Both were developed by Carnegie Mellon University; Deep
Thought development paved the way for the Deep Blue.[73] In 1986, Honda began its
humanoid research and development program to create robots capable of interacting
successfully with humans.[74] Artificial intelligence related technologies, not including
robots, now produce a revenue of $1.4 billion US dollars. [8] In 1988, Stäubli Group
purchased Unimation.[38] The Connection Machine was built in 1988 by Daniel Hillis; the
supercomputer used 64,000 processors simultaneously. [75] A hexapodal robot named
Genghis was revealed by MIT in 1989. Genghis was famous for being made quickly and
cheaply due to construction methods; Genghis used 4 microprocessors, 22 sensors,
and 12 servo motors.[76] Rodney Brooks and Anita M. Flynn published "Fast, Cheap, and
Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of The Solar System". The paper advocated creating
smaller cheaper robots in greater numbers to increase production time and decrease
the difficulty of launching robots into space.[77]

1991 to 2000

While competing in a 1993 NASA sponsored competition, Carnegie Mellon University's

eight legged robot Dante failed to collect gases from Mt. Erebus because of a broken
fiber optic cable. Dante was designed to scale slopes and harvest gases near the
surface of the magma; however, the failure in the cable did not permit the robot to enter
the active volcano.[78] In 1994, Dante II entered Mt. Spurr and successfully sampled the
gases within the volcano.[79] The biomimetic robot RoboTuna was built by doctoral
student David Barrett [disambiguation needed] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
1996 to study how fish swim in water. RoboTuna is designed to swim and resemble a
blue fin tuna.[80] Invented by Dr. John Adler, in 1994, the Cyberknife (a stereotactic
radiosurgery performing robot) represented a faster method of performing surgery with
equivalent accuracy to one done by human doctors. [81] Honda's P2 humanoid robot was
first shown in 1996. Standing for "Prototype Model 2", P2 was an integral part of
Honda's humanoid development project; over 6 feet tall, P2 was smaller than its
predecessors and appeared to be more human-like in its motions. [82] Expected to only
operate for seven days, the Sojourner rover finally shuts down after 83 days of
operation in 1997. This small robot (only weighing 23 lbs) performed semi-autonomous
operations on the surface of Mars as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission; equipped with
an obstacle avoidance program, Sojourner was capable of planning and navigating
routes to study the surface of the planet. Sojourner's ability to navigate with little data
about its environment and nearby surroundings allowed the robot to react to unplanned
events and objects.[83] Also in 1997, IBM's chess playing program Deep Blue beat the
then current World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov playing at the "Grandmaster"
level. The super computer was a specialized version of a framework produced by IBM,
and was capable of processing twice as many moves per second as it had during the
first match (which Deep Blue had lost), reportedly 200,000,000 moves per second. The
event was broadcast live over the internet and received over 74 million hits. [84] The P3
humanoid robot was revealed by Honda in 1998 as a part of the company's continuing
humanoid project.[85] In 1999, Sony introduced the AIBO, a robotic dog capable of
interacting with humans, the first models released in Japan sold out in 20 minutes. [86]
Honda revealed the most advanced result of their humanoid project in 2000, named
ASIMO. ASIMO is capable of running, walking, communication with humans, facial and
environmental recognition, voice and posture recognition, and interacting with its
environment.[87] Sony also revealed its Sony Dream Robots, small humanoid robots in
development for entertainment.[88] In October 2000, the United Nations estimated that
there were 742,500 industrial robots in the world, with more than half of the robots being
used in Japan.[3]

2001 to the present

In April 2001, the Canadarm2 was launched into orbit and attached to the International
Space Station. The Canadarm2 is a larger, more capable version of the arm used by
the Space Shuttle and is hailed as being "smarter."[89] Also in April, the Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle Global Hawk made the first autonomous non-stop flight over the Pacific Ocean
from Edwards Air Force Base in California to RAAF Base Edinburgh in Southern
Australia. The flight was made in 22 hours.[90] The popular Roomba, a robotic vacuum
cleaner, was first released in 2002 by the company iRobot.[91] In 2004, Cornell University
revealed a robot capable of self-replication; a set of cubes capable of attaching and
detaching, the first robot capable of building copies of itself. [92] On January 3 and 24 the
Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity land on the surface of Mars. Launched in 2003, the
two robots will drive many times the distance originally expected, and are still operating.
[93]
All 15 teams competing in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge failed to complete the
course, with no robot successfully navigating more than five percent of the 150 mile off
road course, leaving the $1 million dollar prize unclaimed. [94] In the 2005 DARPA Grand
Challenge, five teams completed the off-road course; Stanford University's Stanley won
first place and the $2 million dollar prize. [95] Also in 2005, Honda revealed a new version
of its ASIMO robot, updated with new behaviors and capabilities. [96] In 2006, Cornell
University revealed its "Starfish" robot, a 4-legged robot capable of self modeling and
learning to walk after having been damaged. [97] In September 2007, Google announced
its Lunar X Prize. The Lunar X Prize offers 30 million dollars to the first private company
which lands a rover on the moon and sends images back to earth. [98] In 2007, TOMY
launched the entertainment robot, i-sobot, which is a humanoid bipedal robot that can
walk like a human beings and performs kicks and punches and also some entertaining
tricks and special actions under "Special Action Mode".