Robotics pioneers

Robotics Pioneers

Born in Russia to Jewish parents, was an American author and professor
of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his
popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all
time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated
9,000 letters and postcards. Some of his books became later on movies
and t.v series.
Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre. His most famous work
is the Foundation Series, his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the
Robot series.
Asimov received numerous awards for his works and later on Honda named the
humanoid robot P3 as ASIMO.

George Devol

George Charles Devol, born in 1912 in Kentucky is the inventor of
the first industrial robot, called Unimate. He co-founded the first robot
company Unimation. As an inventor he has over 40 patents and is
president of Devol Research. Devol has resided in Florida
operating a robot consulting business.

Devol was also part of the team that developed the first commercial use of microwave
oven technology, the Speedy Weeny, which automatically cooked and dispensed
hotdogs in places such as Grand Central Station.

In the early 1950s, Devol licensed his digital magnetic recording device to Remington
Rand of Norwalk, CT and became manager of their magnetics department.

Victor Scheinman

Victor Scheinman is a pioneer in the field of robotics. He is a graduate
of the now-defunct New Lincoln High School in New York. In the late
1950s, and while in high school, Scheinman engineered a
speech-to-text machine as a science fair project. In 1972 while at MIT
and Stanford University, Scheinman invented the Stanford arm, an all-electric, 6-axis
articulated robot designed to permit an arm solution in closed form. This allowed the
robot to accurately follow arbitrary paths in space under computer control and widened
the potential use of the robot to more sophisticated applications such as assembly and
arc welding. In 1973, Scheinman started Vicarm Inc. to manufacture his robot arms. In
1977, Scheinman sold his design to Unimation, who further developed it, with support
from General Motors, as the Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly (PUMA).
He served briefly as General Manager of Unimation's West Coast division before joining
Automatix as a cofounder and vice-president in 1980. While at Automatix, Scheinman
developed RobotWorld, a system of cooperating small modules suspended from a 2-D
linear motor.
Today Scheinman continues to consult and is a visiting professor at Stanford University
in the department of mechanical engineering.

Karel Čapek(1890-1938)

Dr. Karel Čapek was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th
century. He introduced and made popular the frequently used international
word robot, which first appeared in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal
Robots) in 1921. Karel credited his brother, Josef Čapek, as the true
inventor of the word robot.

The word robot comes from the word robota meaning literally serf labor, and,
figuratively, "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech, Slovak and Polish. The origin of the
word is the Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude" ("work" in contemporary Russian),
which in turn comes from the Indo-European root *orbh-. Robot is cognate with the
German word Arbeiter (worker).

William Grey Walter(1910-1977)
W. Grey Walter was a neurophysiologist and robotician.
Walter was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1910. Educated at
Westminster School and afterwards in King's College, Cambridge, in 1931.
He failed to obtain a research fellowship in Cambridge and so turned to
doing basic and applied neurophysiological research in hospitals, in
London, from 1935 to 1939 and then at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, from
1939 to 1970. He also carried out research work in the United States, in the Soviet
Union and in various other places in Europe.
Grey Walter's most famous work was his construction of some of the first electronic
autonomous robots. He wanted to prove that rich connections between a small number
of brain cells could give rise to very complex behaviors - essentially that the secret of
how the brain worked lay in how it was wired up. His first robots, which he used to call
Machina speculatrix and named Elmer and Elsie, were constructed between 1948 and
1949 and were often described as tortoises due to their shape and slow rate of
movement - and because they 'taught us' about the secrets of organisation and life.
The three-wheeled tortoise robots were capable of phototaxis, by which they could find
their way to a recharging station when they ran low on battery power.

Helen Greiner

Helen Greiner (born December 6, 1967) is the co-founder of iRobot, a
consumer robotics company headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts.
In 2003 she was named one of the Ernst and Young New England
Entrepreneurs of the Year for 2003 (with iRobot co-founder Colin Angle).
She has also been honored as a Technology Review Magazine "Innovator
for the Next Century," and has been awarded the DEMO God Award at the DEMO
Conference. She was one of the three people to design the first version of the iRobot
Roomba.
She holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in
computer science, both from MIT. She also holds a honorary doctor of engineering
degree from WPI
Under Helen Greiner's leadership, iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) is delivering robots into
the industrial, consumer and military markets. Helen is highly decorated for her
visionary contributions in technology innovation and business leadership. She was
named by the Kennedy School at Harvard in conjunction with the U.S. News and World
Report as one of America's Best Leaders.

Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer, and
essayist whose published work during his lifetime was almost entirely
in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and
metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic
corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his
later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics
and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of
drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such
as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.
Philip k. Dick received many awards for his works. Some of his books became later on
movies such as: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck and Next.

The list above is only a partial list of the people who contributed most to the
development of robotics as writers, engineers and inventors.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list. I do believe it is reasonably accurate and
representative.

If you have any comments or suggests please email quacktu: contact@quacktu.com

Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 – October 24,
1991) was an American screenwriter and producer. He created the
American science-fiction series Star Trek, an accomplishment for
which he was sometimes referred to as the "Great Bird of the Galaxy"
due to the show's influence on popular culture. He was one of the
first people to have his ashes "buried" in space. Gene Roddenberry has been inducted
into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Robotics pioneers
Pioneer in robotics

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