|
Elmer And Elsie (robots)
Elmer and Elsie (ELectroMEchanical Robot, Light-Sensitive) were two electronic robots that were built in the late 1940s by neurobiologist and cybernetician William Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think".Ingalis-Arkell, Esthe"The Very First Robot Brains Were Made of Old Alarm Clocks" 07 March 2012. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis, which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.Norman, Jeremy"The First Electronic Autonomous Robots: the Origin of Social Robotics (1948 – 1949)" Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc., 02004-2018. Description Elmer and Elsie, or the "tortoises" as they were known, were constructed between 1948 and 1949 using war surplus materials and old alarm clocks. They had a single light or touch sensor hooked up to two different paths that ran two different motors acting as two separate neuron brains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neurobiologist
A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist specializing in neuroscience that deals with the anatomy and function of neurons, neural circuits, and glia, and their behavioral, biological, and psychological roles in health and disease. Neuroscientists generally work as researchers within a college, university, government agency, or private industry setting. In research-oriented careers, neuroscientists design and conduct scientific experiments on the nervous system and its functions. They can engage in basic or applied research. Basic research seeks to expand current understanding of the nervous system, whereas applied research seeks to address a specific problem, such as developing a treatment for a neurological disorder. Neuroscientists have numerous career opportunities outside of academic research, including careers in industry, science writing, government program management, science advocacy, and education. A neuroscientist commonly holds a doctorate in a medica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years. Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Roman Empire, Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of Government of the United Kingdom, the national government and Parliament of the United Kingdom, parliament. London grew rapidly 19th-century London, in the 19th century, becoming the world's List of largest cities throughout history, largest city at the time. Since the 19th cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turtle (robot)
Turtles are a class of educational robots designed originally in the late 1940s (largely under the auspices of researcher William Grey Walter) and used in computer science and mechanical engineering training. These devices are traditionally built low to the ground with a roughly hemispheric (sometimes transparent) shell and a power train capable of a very small turning radius. The robots are often equipped with sensor devices that aid in avoiding obstacles and, if the robot is sufficiently sophisticated, allow it some perception of its environment. Turtle robots are commercially available and are common projects for robotics hobbyists. Turtle robots are closely associated with the work of Seymour Papert and the common use of the Logo programming language in computer education of the 1980s. Turtles specifically designed for use with Logo systems often come with pen mechanisms allowing the programmer to create a design on a large sheet of paper. The original Logo turtle, built by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robotic Vacuum Cleaner
A robotic vacuum cleaner, sometimes called a robovac or a roomba as a generic trademark, is an autonomous vacuum cleaner which has a limited vacuum floor cleaning system combined with sensors and robotic drives with programmable controllers and cleaning routines. Early designs included manual operation via remote control and a "self-drive" mode which allowed the machine to clean autonomously. Marketing materials for robotic vacuums frequently cite low noise, ease of use, and autonomous cleaning as main advantages. The perception that these devices are set-and-forget solutions is widespread but not always correct. Robotic vacuums are usually smaller than traditional upright vacuums, and weigh significantly less than even the lightest canister models. However, a downside to a robotic vacuum cleaner is that it takes an extended amount of time to vacuum an area due to its size. They are also relatively expensive, and replacement parts and batteries can contribute significantly to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the Federal government of the United States#branches, three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967. The Smithsonian Institution has historical holdings of over 157 million items, 21 museums, 21 libraries, 14 education and research centers, a zoo, and historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in Washington, D.C. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York (state), New York, and Virg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival Of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851. However, it was not to be another World Fair, for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth. Instead, the 1951 festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Labour government was losing support and so the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. The Festival's centrepiece was in London on the South Bank of the Thames. There were events in Poplar (Architecture – Lansbury Estate), Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of The West Of England
The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a Public university, public research university, located in and around Bristol, England, UK. With more than 39,912 students and 4,300 staff, it is the largest provider of higher education in the South West of England. The institution was known as the Bristol Polytechnic in 1969; it received university status in 1992 and became the University of the West of England, Bristol. In common with the University of Bristol and University of Bath, it can trace its origins to the Merchant Venturers' Technical College, founded as a school in 1595 by the Merchant Venturers, Society of Merchant Venturers. UWE Bristol is made up of several campuses in Greater Bristol. Frenchay Campus is the largest campus in terms of student numbers, as most of its courses are based there. City campus provides courses in the creative and cultural industries, and is made up of Bower Ashton Studios, Arnolfini, Bristol, Arnolfini, Spike Islan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Owen Holland (academic)
Owen Holland (born 1947) is professor emeritus of cognitive robotics (Informatics) in the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He was until recently a professor of computer science at the University of Essex, England. Previously, he has held faculty positions at Caltech, University of Bielefeld, Starlab and the University of the West of England. Holland is best known for his work in biologically-inspired robotics, where he has contributed to the theory and practice of collective robotics, ant algorithms and machine consciousness, among other sub-fields. Some of the projects he has been involved in have attracted attention from the media, notably the Slugbot project, which aimed to produce a robotic predator capable of sustaining its energy levels from hunting and digesting slugs Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Museum, London
The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, the Science Museum does not charge visitors for admission, although visitors are requested to make a donation if they are able. Temporary exhibitions may incur an admission fee. It is one of the five museums in the Science Museum Group. Founding and history The museum was founded in 1857 under Bennet Woodcroft from the collection of the Royal Society of Arts and surplus items from the Great Exhibition as part of the South Kensington Museum, together with what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum. It included a collection of machinery which became the ''Museum of Patents'' in 1858, and the ''Patent Office Museum'' in 1863. This collection contained many of the most famous exhibits of what is now th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BEAM Robotics
BEAM robotics (from biology, electronics, aesthetics and mechanics) is a style of robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits, such as comparators, instead of a microprocessor in order to produce an unusually simple design. While not as flexible as microprocessor based robotics, BEAM robotics can be robust and efficient in performing the task for which it was designed. BEAM robots may use a set of the analog circuits, mimicking biological neurons, to facilitate the robot's response to its working environment. Mechanisms and principles The basic BEAM principles focus on a stimulus-response based ability within a machine. The underlying mechanism was invented by Mark W. Tilden where the circuit (or a Nv net of Nv neurons) is used to simulate biological neuron behaviours. Some similar research was previously done by Ed Rietman in 'Experiments In Artificial Neural Networks'. Tilden's circuit is often compared to a shift register, but with several important features ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyberneticist
Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including in engineering, Ecology, ecological, Economy, economic, Biological cybernetics, biological, Cognitive science, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as Design, designing, learning, and Management cybernetics, managing. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it Intersection (set theory), intersects with a number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations. The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering a ship (the ancient Greek alphabet, Greek κυβερνήτης (''kybernḗtēs'') refers to the person who steers a ship). In steering a ship, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Tilden
Mark W. Tilden is a robotics physicist who produces complex robotic movements from simple analog logic circuits, often with discrete electronic components, and usually without a microprocessor. He is controversial because of his libertarian Tilden's Laws of Robotics, and is known for his invention of BEAM robotics and the WowWee Robosapien humanoid robot. Early career Born in the UK in 1961, raised in Canada, Tilden started at the University of Waterloo then moved on to the Los Alamos National Laboratory where he developed simple robots such as the SATbot which instinctively aligned itself to the magnetic field of the Earth, de-mining insectoids, "Nervous Network" theory and applications, interplanetary explorers, and behavioral research into many solar-powered "Living Machines" of his own design. Tilden later referred to his early robots as "wimpy" for the results of their programming using Isaac Asimov's Three Rules of Robotics. He accordingly promulgated another set of thr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
