SRI's Shakey
The
"Stanford Cart" and SRI's "Shakey" were the first mobile
robots controlled by computers (room-sized, radio linked).
Both saw with TV cameras. Shakey could locate large prismatic
objects (alas unreliably), and plan actions to achieve requested
results. Their control complexity was far greater than
Elsie's or the Beast's, and the use of computers to control robots can be
compared to the advent of multicellular animals with nervous systems
in the Cambrian explosion: both events blew the lid on behavioral
complexity in their respective domains.
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