Page 15 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

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INTRODUCTION

lthough true robots are a creation of the second half of the 20th
A century, the idea of the robot has stirred the human imagination
for a much longer period of time.
Images of artificial people and mechanical servants stretch back
even to the days of ancient myth. For example, the Greek god of
metalwork, called Vulcan or Hephaestus, was said to have created
two kinds of mechanical servants: graceful golden handmaidens
and (more practically perhaps) tables that walked by themselves on
three legs.
In medieval Jewish lore, a golem was a clay statute that could
be animated by a magician using incantations from the Kabbalah.
The instructions for a golem’s operation were inscribed on a scroll
and placed inside the being’s head. In one legend, a golem was given
instructions to fill a well, but its scroll did not tell it when to stop
filling it. Soon the house was overflowing with water in what was
perhaps the world’s first programming error. Fear of losing control
has always been part of our primal response to robots.

Automatons and the Age of Reason

The Renaissance brought new interest in the structures and mecha-
nisms of the human body, and in the late 15th and early 16th cen-
turies, the famed artist-inventor Leonardo da Vinci made sketches
of many mechanisms based on principles he found in nature. One
such drawing showed a mechanical knight that could move its head
and jaw, sit up, and wave its arms.
By the 18th century, the construction of elaborate automatons
had become the rage in the royal courts of Europe. One inventor,

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