| 270 BC |
| An ancient Greek engineer named Ctesibus made organs and water clocks with movable figures.
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| 1774 |
| Swiss inventors Pierre and Henri-Louis Jacquet-Droz created some of the most complicated automatons of this period. In 1774 their Automatic Scribe was unveiled. This lifelike figure of a boy could draw and write any message up to 40 characters long. A robot woman playing a piano was another one of their great inventions. |
| 1801 |
| Joseph Jacquard invents a textile machine which is operated by punch cards. The machine is called a programmable loom and goes into mass production.
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| 1818 |
| Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" which was about a frightening artificial lifeform created by Dr. Frankenstein. |
| 1830 |
| American Christopher Spencer designs a cam-operated lathe. |
| 1892 | Seward Babbitt creates a motorised crane with gripper to remove ingots from a furnace.
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| 1921 |
| The first reference to the word "robot" appears in a play staged in London, called "R.U.R." or "Rossum's Universal Robots" written by the Czech writer Karel Çapek. (Mr. Çapek is also known as the 'inventor' of the science-fiction genre). The play introduces the word robot from the Slovak language 'robota', which means a serf or one in subservient labour or forced labour. Mr. Çapek probably brought this influence to the R.U.R. novel during one his usual healing stays at Vysoke Tatry, Slovakia (previously Czechoslovakia). From this beginning, the concept of a robot takes hold. The plot was simple: robotic workers - "mechanical men" - rebel against their masters and assume control of the world after slaughtering them, i.e. man makes robot then robot kills man!
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| 1941 |
| Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov first used the word "robotics" to describe the technology of robots and predicted the rise of a powerful robot industry.
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| 1942 |
| Asimov wrote "Runaround", a story about robots which contained the "Three Laws of Robotics":
1. A robot may not injure a human, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders 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 does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This story was later included in Asimov's famous book "I, Robot." The robot stories of Isaac Asimov also introduced the idea of a "positronic brain" (used by the character "Data" in Star Trek). Later, he added the "zeroth" law.
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| 1946 |
| George Devol patents a general purpose playback device for controlling machines. The device uses a magnetic process recorder. In the same year the computer emerges for the first time. American scientists J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly build the first large electronic computer called the Eniac at the University of Pennsylvania. A second computer, the first general-purpose digital computer, dubbed Whirlwind, solves its first problem at M.I.T.
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| 1948 |
| "Cybernetics", an influence on artificial intelligence research was published by Norbert Wiener, a professor at M.I.T. It describes the concept of communications and control in electronic, mechanical, and biological systems
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| 1951 |
| A teleoperator-equipped articulated arm is designed by Raymond Goertz for the Atomic Energy Commission
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| 1954 |
| The first programmable robot is designed by George Devol, who coins the term Universal Automation. He later shortens this to Unimation, which becomes the name of the first robot company in 1956.
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| 1956 |
| George Devol and Joseph Engelberger formed the world's first robot company.
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| 1959 |
| Computer-assisted manufacturing was demonstrated at the Servomechanisms Lab at MIT. Also Planet Corporation markets the first commercially available robot.
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| 1961 |
| The first industrial robot was on a production line a General Motors automobile factory in New Jersey. It was called UNIMATE.
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| 1963 |
| The first artificial robotic arm to be controlled by a computer was designed. The Rancho Arm was designed as a tool for the handicapped and it's six joints gave it the flexibility of a human arm.
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| 1964 |
| Artificial intelligence research laboratories are opened at M.I.T., Stanford Research Institute (SRI), Stanford University, and the University of Edinburgh. (Yep, just round the corner from the iiRobotics shop!)
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| 1965 |
| Dendral was the first expert system or program designed to execute the accumulated knowledge of subject experts.
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| 1968 |
| The octopus-like Tentacle Arm was developed by Marvin Minsky. Also in that year, SRI builds and tests a mobile robot with vision capability, called Shakey. Shakey was the first mobile robot that could think independently and interact with its surroundings (from Wickelgren, 1996).
The caption under the image on the right reads "...[Shakey] is smart and sensitive. Shakey was the first mobile robot that could think and respond to the world around it." (taken from Adam Currie's site).
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| 1969 |
| At Stanford University a robot arm is developed which becomes a standard for research projects. The arm is the first electrically powered computer-controlled robot arm and becomes known as The Stanford Arm.
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| 1970 |
| Shakey is introduced as the first mobile robot controlled by artificial intelligence. It was produced by SRI International.
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| 1970's |
| In the 1970's Edinburgh University's Freddy robot was the vehicle for the Informatics Department's early artificial intelligence work on what might be termed hand/eye co-ordination in assembly robotics. The most noteworthy achievement was the Versatile Assembly Program, which enabled the robot to construct a toy boat and a toy car from a heap of mixed parts tipped onto the table. This experiment demonstrated that it was very difficult to devise successful assembly programs for a sensor-based robot, when the robot was programmed in terms of sequences of positions of its end-effector in Cartesian space. This is still the method used in commercial assembly robots today. |
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| 1973 |
| The first commercially available minicomputer-controlled industrial robot is developed by Richard Hohn for Cincinnati Milacron Corporation. The robot is called the T3, The Tomorrow Tool.
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| 1974 |
| A robotic arm (the Silver Arm) that performed small-parts assembly using feedback from touch and pressure sensors was designed. Professor Scheinman, the developer of the Stanford Arm, forms Vicarm Inc. to market a version of the arm for industrial applications. The new arm is controlled by a minicomputer.
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| 1976 |
| Robot arms are used on Viking 1 and 2 space probes. Vicarm Inc. incorporates a microcomputer into the Vicarm design.
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| 1977 |
| ASEA, a European robot company, offers two sizes of electric powered industrial robots. Both robots use a microcomputer controller for programming and operation. In the same year Unimation purchases Vicarm Inc.
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| 1978 |
| The Puma (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) robot is developed by Unimation from Vicarm techniques and with support from General Motors.
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| 1979 |
| The Standford Cart crossed a chair-filled room without human assistance. The cart had a TV camera mounted on a rail which took pictures from multiple angles and relayed them to a computer. The computer analysed the distance between the cart and the obstacles.
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| 1980 |
| The robot industry starts its rapid growth, with a new robot or company entering the market every month.
Image: "Robot III" six-legged robotic insect, developed by Roger Quinn and Roy Ritzmann at Case Western Reserve University.
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| 1994 |
| CMU Robotics Institute's Dante II, a six-legged walking robot, explores the Mt. Spurr volcano in Alaska to sample volcanic gases.
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| 1995 |
| Intuitive Surgical formed by Fred Moll, Rob Younge and John Freud to design and market surgical robotic systems. Founding technology based on the work at SRI, IBM and MIT.
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| 1997 |
| NASA's Mars PathFinder mission captures the eyes and imagination of the world as PathFinder lands on Mars and the Sojourner rover robot sends back images of its travels on the distant planet. Also in the same year, Honda showcases the P3, the 8th prototype in a humanoid design project started in 1986.
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| 2000 |
| | Honda showcases Asimo, the next generation of its series of humanoid robots. Sony unveils humanoid robots, dubbed Sony Dream Robots (SDR), at Robodex and also the second generation of its Aibo robot dog. |
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| 2001 |
| Built by MD Robotics of Canada, the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) is successfully launched into orbit and begins operations to complete assembly of International Space Station.
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| 2004 |
| The US robotics physicist and BEAM expert, Dr. Mark W. Tilden, who developed applied biomorphic robotics and has worked for NASA, DARPA, JPL at Los Alamos and other government research agencies developed the most incredible interactive, articulate, animated and above all fully programmable humanoid, Robosapien™. | |
Tekno Dog Manual (2141)
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