Subject: Owen Holland Talk - 3/30/01
From: Sally J. Persing (sally@ai.mit.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 23 2001 - 15:51:21 EST
Rare opportunity:
Grey Walter's tortoise: a fifty-year-old behavior-based robot?
Owen Holland
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK
Date: March 30, 2001
Time: 3:00pm
Place: NE43-941
Abstract
Fifty years ago, Scientific American published an article by
Grey Walter, an English neurophysiologist entitled 'An Imitation of
Life'. It described the structure and behavior of a simple type of
robot, Machina speculatrix, usually referred to as a turtle or
tortoise; one of the two surviving tortoises is currently on display
in the MIT museum. There are many intriguing similarities between the
tortoise and the behavior-based robots developed at MIT thirty-five
years later. I will describe and analyse those similarities and will
present archive material suggesting that the tortoise deserves to be
regarded as an early example of a behavior-based robot. The talk will
be illustrated with contemporary photographs and film, and will
include a live demonstration of a replica tortoise using many
original components.
~~Sj
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