Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
It bustles around in a series of swooping curves so that in an hour
it will investigate several hundred square feet of ground. In its
exploration of an ordinary room it inevitably encounters many ob-
stacles, but apart from stairs and fur rugs, there are few situations
from which it cannot extricate itself. [1]
The behaviour of the tortoises established Walter as the pioneer of elec-
tronic robots. His were among the first man-made creatures that pos-
sessed some of the properties typical of living beings, such as behaviour
and self-organization. His work attracted considerable media and pub-
lic attention, resulting in several requests to “adopt” Elsie and Elmer as
pets. Walter himself developed a feeling of affection for them, referring
to them as “little beasts that seem to have a personality of their own”. His
were also the first free-ranging, autonomous robots capable of exploring
their own limited worlds, and they showed what can be achieved with
relatively simple electronic brains. They were so life-like in their behav-
iour that an old lady who felt pursued by one of them ran upstairs and
locked her door!
Although the results of Walter's research into robotics were quite spec-
tacular for his day, the significance of his work was not widely recognized
at the time. Sadly his career was cut short by a tragic motorcycle accident
when he was 60, in which he sustained massive brain damage, leading to
his death seven years later. A specimen of one of his second generation
tortoises is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
Alan Turing
Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a brilliant British mathematician and one
in life, Turing showed signs of the genius he was to display more promi-
nently later. He is said to have taught himself to read in three weeks and
to have shown an early affinity for numbers and puzzles, and when he
was only 16 Turing discovered and understood Albert Einstein's work,
even extrapolating Einstein's Law of Motion from a text in which it was
never properly explained.
During World War II Turing was a major participant at Bletchley
Park, in the British efforts aimed at breaking the German Enigma code.
He also contributed several mathematical insights on the Fish teletype
ciphers, encoding machines used by the Germans. Turing's work on Fish
