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British robotist William Gray Walter creates autonomous machines called Elmer and Elsie that imitate realistic behavior with few simple circuits -
Researchers John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky start the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. -
The first industrial robot: The first industrial robot was introduced into the production line of the General Motors plant in 1961. "Unimate" was a powerful robotic arm for installing molten metal products and welded components on the car chassis. It was the first robotic arm that helped accelerate production lines in factories around the world.
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Wabot 1, the world's first large-scale anthropomorphic robot, is built at Waseda University in Japan. He is able to communicate in Japanese, walk and grab objects with his hands.
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The first officially registered use of a medical robot dates back to 1984, when Artrobot, developed in Vancouver by Jeff Ochinleck and Dr. James McWan in collaboration with surgeon Brian Day, was used in orthopedic surgery.
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The Mobile Robots Group at MIT creates a walking robot called Genghis. MIT researchers Rodney Brooks and A. M. Flynn publish the article "Fast, cheap and out of control: a robotic invasion of solar system energy," which justifies the construction of many small and cheap robots instead of a few large and expensive ones.
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American neurosurgeon John Adler invents the CyberKnife, a robot that takes images of a patient and administers a previously planned dose of radiation.
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Honda presents ASIMO, the next generation in its series of humanoid robots. The United Nations estimates that there are 742,500 industrial robots in use worldwide. Sony presents the Sony Dream humanoid robot. Italian computational neurobiologist Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi of Northwestern University connects a lamprey brain to the sensors to control a robot. The da Vinci surgery system becomes the first robotic surgery system approved by the FDA.
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After being first introduced in 2002, the popular robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba has sold more than 2.5 million units, which shows that there is a strong demand for this type of domestic robotic technology. -
In Europe, Germany remains the main user with about 221,500 robots, three times more than Italy (74,400 units), five times more than France (42,000 units) and about ten times more than the United Kingdom (21,700 units).