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The origin of "Robot"
The term "Robot" is first used by CZECH writer Karel Capek. The word originated from the Slavic language as "robota", meaning forced labour. -
Elektro - The Humanoid Robot
Elecktro, a humanoid robot, debuts at the World's fair, smoking cigarettes and blowing up balloons. He could walk by voice commands, speak about 700 words and move his head and arms. He was 200 meters tall, weighing 120 kilograms. His body consisted was made up of aluminium skin. -
World War Two leads to a new way of thinking
World War Two brought together scientists from many disciplines, including the emerging fields of neuroscience and computing. Alan Turing and neurologist Grey Walter traded ideas in an influential dining society called the Ratio Club. Walter built some of the first ever robots. Turing went on to invent the so-called Turing Test, which set the bar for an intelligent machine: a computer that could fool someone into thinking they were talking to another person. -
AI Science fiction
In 1950, I Robot was published, a collection of short stories by science fiction. The book imagined developments that seem remarkably prescient – such as a computer capable of storing all human knowledge that anyone can ask any question. -
Tackling Artificial Intelligence
Top scientists debated how to tackle AI. Some suggested pre-programming a computer with the rules that govern human behaviour. Others preferred a bottom-up approach, such as neural networks that simulated brain cells and learned new behaviours. People hoped AI might give them the upper hand in the Cold War. -
Imagining where AI could lead
The film Space Odyssey mirrored some predictions made by AI researchers at the time, that machines were heading towards human level intelligence very soon. It also brilliantly captured some of the public’s fears, that artificial intelligences could be used in unethical ways -
Shakey - The first mobile robot
Shakey was the first general-purpose mobile robot able to make decisions about its own actions depending on its surroundings. It built a spatial map of what it saw, before moving. But it was extremely slow, even in an area with few obstacles. Each time it moved forward, Shakey would have to update its map. A moving object in its field of view could easily bewilder it, sometimes stopping it in its tracks for an hour while it planned its next move. -
The downfall of AI
In 1973 mathematician Professor Sir James Lighthill gave a health report on the state of AI in the UK. His view was that machines would only ever be capable of an "experienced amateur" level of chess. Common sense reasoning and supposedly simple tasks like face recognition would always be beyond their capability. Funding for the industry was slashed, ushering in what became known as the AI winter. -
AI in the market
AI's market value started to be realised, attracting new investment from businesses. Instead of trying to create a general intelligence, these ‘expert systems’ focused on one specific task. That meant they only needed to be programmed with the rules of a very particular problem. The first successful commercial expert system, known as the RI, began operation at the Digital Equipment Corporation helping configure orders for new computer systems. -
Neural Newtorks
Expert systems still weren't as good as actual experts.Rodney Brooks was inspired by advances in neuroscience, which had started to explain the mysteries of human cognition. Vision, for example, needed different 'modules' in the brain to work together to recognise patterns, with no central control. With this theory in mind, he developed the field of neural networks. -
Deep Blue, a super computer
Deep Blue, a supercomputer took on world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. The IBM-built machine was capable of evaluating up to 200 million positions a second and it could also think strategically. The supercomputer won the contest. -
Robot or homes
iRobot, was the first commercially successful robot for the home. It was an autonomous vacuum cleaner called Roomba. The device had enough intelligence to reliably and efficiently clean a home. Roomba ushered in a new era of autonomous robots, focused on specific tasks. -
Robots in the military
Robots played a major role in military. BigDog, made by Boston Dynamics, was built to serve in lands too rough for conventional vehicles. iRobot also became a big player in this field. Their bomb disposal robot, PackBot, has a user control with intelligent capabilities such as explosives sniffing. Over 2000 PackBots have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. -
Speech recognition
In November 2008, a small feature appeared on the new Apple iPhone – a Google app with speech recognition. Google started a new approach: thousands of powerful computers, running parallel neural networks, learning to spot patterns in the data from Google users. -
Dance Bots
Modern robots used lots of the technology pioneered over the previous decade, such as learning enabled by neural networks. At Shanghai's 2010 World Expo, some of the extraordinary capabilities of these robots went on display, as 20 of them danced in perfect harmony for eight minutes. -
Man vs Machine
In 2011, IBM's Watson, a question answering computer system took challenged the human brain on US quiz show Jeopardy. The super computer Watson had to answer riddles and complex questions. Its makers used a variety of AI techniques, including neural networks, and trained the machine for more than three years to recognise patterns in questions and answers. Watson defeated the two best human performers. -
Sophia the robot
Sophia is a social humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016 and made her first public appearance at South by Southwest Festival in mid-March 2016 in Austin, Texas, United States. She is able to display more than 50 facial expressions. -
Google home
Google Home is a brand of smart speakers developed by Google. Google Home speakers enable users to speak voice commands to interact with services through Google's intelligent personal assistant called Google Assistant. A large number of services, both in-house and third-party, are integrated, allowing users to listen to music, control playback of videos or photos, or receive news updates entirely by voice. -
Apple's face ID
Apple's new facial recognition feature on their Iphone X lets people securely their phone authenticate purchases, sign in to apps with just a glance. The TrueDepth camera captures accurate face data by projecting and analyzing over 30,000 invisible dots to create a depth map of a person's face and also captures an infrared image of the face.
