Shakey the robot
In plain wordsA wheeled robot built at a California research institute between 1966 and 1972 that could look around, make a plan and carry it out: the first mobile robot to work out its own steps toward a goal.
A wheeled robot built between 1966 and 1972 in the Artificial Intelligence Center of SRI International (then the Stanford Research Institute), usually credited as the first mobile robot that could decide for itself how to carry out a broadly stated task instead of following step-by-step commands. Shakey carried a television camera, an optical range finder and bump sensors on a wheeled base and was controlled over a radio link by a room-sized computer. Given typed goals such as pushing a box from one room into another, it built a model of its surroundings, planned a sequence of actions, executed them and replanned when something went wrong. The project produced lasting techniques: the A* searchA* search, n.: A method for finding the shortest route on a map or network that weighs both how far you have already come and a smart guess of how far is left, so it tries the most promising paths first. algorithm (1968), the STRIPSSTRIPS, prop. n.: An early AI planning program, and the simple action language it introduced, in which each action lists what must be true beforehand, what becomes true and what stops being true. planner (1971), the visibility-graph method of path planning, and a widely used form of the Hough transform for detecting lines in images.
The sense–plan–act architecture pioneered on Shakey dominated robotics for two decades.
Origin
Led by Charles Rosen, with Nils Nilsson, Peter Hart, Richard Fikes, Bertram Raphael and others, and funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (then ARPA). It was named for its jerky motion. A 1970 Life magazine article called it the 'first electronic person'.
Usage note
Shakey's slow deliberative cycle provoked the behavior-based robotics of Rodney BrooksRodney Brooks, prop. n.: An Australian-American roboticist who argued that intelligence grows out of acting in the world rather than abstract reasoning, and who co-founded the company behind the Roomba vacuum. in the 1980s. The robot is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Related
- A* searchA* search, n.: A method for finding the shortest route on a map or network that weighs both how far you have already come and a smart guess of how far is left, so it tries the most promising paths first.
- STRIPSSTRIPS, prop. n.: An early AI planning program, and the simple action language it introduced, in which each action lists what must be true beforehand, what becomes true and what stops being true.
- automated planningautomated planning, n.: The branch of AI that works out a sequence of actions to reach a goal, such as the steps a robot must take to assemble a part, from descriptions of what each action needs and what it changes.
- roboticsrobotics, n.: The science and engineering of building robots and making them work: designing their bodies, sensors and motors, and writing the software that lets them see, plan and move safely.
- Moravec's paradoxMoravec's paradox, n.: The observation that what is hard for people, like chess or algebra, is often easy for computers, while what toddlers do effortlessly, such as seeing, walking and picking things up, is very hard for machines.
- symbolic AIsymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data.
Sources
- Nilsson, N. J. (ed.) (1984). Shakey the Robot. SRI International AI Center, Technical Note 323.
Mentioned in
A* searchA* search, n.: A method for finding the shortest route on a map or network that weighs both how far you have already come and a smart guess of how far is left, so it tries the most promising paths first., DARPADARPA, prop. n.: The US military's research-funding agency, which paid for much of the early development of artificial intelligence and the internet and runs prize competitions such as driverless-car races., mobile robotmobile robot, n.: A robot that travels around by itself — on wheels, tracks, legs, propellers or thrusters — such as a robot vacuum, warehouse cart, delivery robot or planetary rover., path planningpath planning, n.: Finding a route for a robot or vehicle from a start to a goal that avoids obstacles, usually the shortest or safest one, much as a navigation app finds a route on a map., IJCAIIJCAI, prop. n.: A worldwide conference spanning all branches of artificial intelligence, first held in 1969, before any of today's other leading AI meetings. It also presents some of the field's best-known awards., Nils NilssonNils Nilsson, prop. n.: An American computer scientist who co-created the A* search algorithm and the STRIPS planner for Shakey, the first robot to plan its own moves by reasoning, and wrote standard AI textbooks., SRI InternationalSRI International, prop. n.: A nonprofit research institute in California, once part of Stanford University, where the Shakey robot was built and the technology behind Apple's Siri assistant began., STRIPSSTRIPS, prop. n.: An early AI planning program, and the simple action language it introduced, in which each action lists what must be true beforehand, what becomes true and what stops being true., subsumption architecturesubsumption architecture, n.: A way to build robot brains from stacked, reflex-like behaviors — a bottom layer that keeps clear of obstacles, others that roam or explore — where higher layers can take over from lower ones, with no central map or plan.