Walter creates the first electronic autonomous robots.
Robots, in one guise or another , had been suggested as far as 1495, when Lenonardo da Vinci created his mechanical knights robot.
However,the first significant robot prototypes , buit in 1948, were a pair of tortoislike robot anmed Elimer and Elsie.
Created by United States-born neurophysiologist and inventor Dr. William Grey walter (1910-1977), the tortoise robots were remarkable in their ability to mimic lifelike behavior. These experimental robots incorporated sensors for light and touch, as well as motors for propulsion and steering, and a two vaccum tube(valve) analog "computer".
With the aid of simple circuitry, these electromechanical, three-wheeled robots were capable of phototaxis (an automatic movement toward or away from lights), and could thus find their own to a recharging station when they ran low on "food" a precursor of the technique used in the popular Sony Alibo robot dog some sixty years later. Using a combination of light-level and motor-power settings, four modes of operations were possible. This produced a variety of unique behavior patterns in the tortoises, in one experiment, Dr. Walter placed a light on the front of a tortoise and watched asthe robot considered itself in a mirror.
Because of their speculative, exploratory tendencies, Dr. Walter called his tortoises "Machina Speculatrix." Designed to aid the study and testing of theories of behavior arising from neural interconnections, these small robots with reflexes were hugely influential in the birth and development of the sciences of cybernetics and robotics. MD
