Page 17 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines
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INTRODUCTION xvii
Robots’ First Steps
The development of the digital computer as well as sophisticated elec-
tronics and control systems during the 1940s gave engineers the prac-
tical means to start building real robots. This book’s first featured
scientist, Norbert Wiener, a mathematician whose interests ranged
from computers to game theory to neurology, provided in cybernetics
a badly needed theoretical framework for understanding communica-
tion, feedback, and control in machines—including robots.
A family tree shows how robots developed from increasingly complex tools and
machines. After they gained mobility, robots then branched into a variety of roles,
with the potential of becoming humanlike in structure and behavior.
