Page 16 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

xvi Modern Robotics

Jacques de Vaucanson, built an android or humanlike automaton
that could play the flute. Another Vaucanson creation, a mechanical
duck, could simulate eating, digestion, and defecation. It should be
noted, however, that these automata, despite their complexity, were
not true robots in the modern sense. Everything they did was dic-
tated step by step by the action of clockwork, cams, or other mecha-
nisms. Their actions were fixed and unvarying, without regard for
the people or things in the surrounding environment.
The automaton seemed to symbolize the triumph of the Age of
Reason, a time when a newly confident science mastered the secrets
of gravity and motion. To many observers, these developments in
theory and technology suggested that if a machine could be made to
imitate the actions of animals and even people, perhaps living things
were merely elaborate automatons whose mechanism would soon be
uncovered by science.

Anticipating Robots:
20th-Century Science Fiction

At the dawn of the 20th century, an explosion of new scientific
theories and inventions led to the creation of a literature that sought
to explore their implications and a variety of possible futures. In
the science fiction magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, the alien
“bug-eyed monsters” were often accompanied by hulking robots.
These robots were often relentless in their attempts to carry out
some sort of evil plan.
Robots also appeared in other media. Indeed, the word robot
is first found in the 1921 play Rossum’s Universal Robots by the
Czech playwright Karel Capek. Here and in Fritz Lang’s 1927
movie Metropolis, the robot took on a social dimension, symbol-
izing the threat of automation to human livelihoods and suggesting
the relentless metronome-like pace of the industrial world.
While many writers caused people to fear robots, Isaac Asimov
inspired a generation of engineers to build them. In Asimov’s sto-
ries, robots were the (usually) reliable servants of humankind, built
to obey laws that would prevent them from harming people.