Micro Memories
would come from television cameras
and other sensors and whose outputs
would drive effector motors to carry
the machine purposefully through its
environment?”
Rosen wrote a memo outlining
his plans for such a robot or
“automaton,” as he called it. Then,
as Nilsson describes it, “During
1964, we spent a lot of time planning a robot research project and
discussing the idea with possible
sponsors. As interest in computer
science and artificial intelligence
grew, we were ready to concede that
our robot ought to be equipped with
heuristic computer programs, as
well as pattern-recognizing learning
machines.”
Their proposal eventually won
funding from ARPA, which sent
an informal request to SRI to bid
on a research program to develop
automatons.
control unit, a rubberized “bump
detector” for when it came in
contact with a wall or other object,
and — underneath it all — drive
and caster wheels.
Of course, as Dr. Waldinger
notes, “There were no personal
computers in those days and
computers back then were bigger
and heavier than you’d want to
carry around.”
So, Shakey’s brains, “were in a
larger computer and I think they
changed computers from time to
time as newer computers came
along. I think there was maybe an
SDS940 and that might have been
replaced by a DEC10. It may have
had some things onboard, but not
very much.” Shakey was connected to them first by cable, “and
then, eventually, I think there was a
radio link.”
Like many prototypes,
Waldinger remembers Shakey as
being “a very unreliable piece of
equipment. First of all, it was very
slow and, when it was moving something, it was not very long before
something would go wrong.
For example, a lot of things done
in the movies were pieced together —
it didn’t do things all at once; it did a
little bit and then it broke and then
somebody had to fix it.”
Shakey's head combined a television camera and
a rangefinder. Unlike a human, his actual brains
resided in computers that connected to Shakey
via cables, and later, a wireless connection.
Meet Shakey
Shakey wasn’t designed to be an
aesthetic knockout — in fact, it was
rather ungainly looking. It was
several feet tall with a sort of head
containing a TV camera and range
finder, but that head was attached to
a square body containing onboard
logic and electronics, a camera
SRI made a series of films of
Shakey in action. Waldinger notes
that, “in the first movie, there was a
clock on the wall and you could see
by looking at the clock how long
things were taking. Actually,
sometimes the clock would seem to
move backward, because something
had been done late one day and then
was picked up the next day or maybe
SEPTEMBER 2004
Circle #129 on the Reader Service Card.
19
