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Beast
A robot group built two functioning prototypes that roamed and "lived"
in the hallways of the lab, avoiding hazards such as open stairwells and
doors, hanging cables and people while searching for food in the form
of AC power on the walls to recharge their batteries.
They used the senses of touch, hearing, feel and vision. Programming
consisted of patch cables on patch boards connecting hand built logic
circuits to set up behavior for avoidance, escape, searching and
feeding.
The robots were referred to as Mod I ("Mod one," the little blocky one)
and Mod II ("Mod two," the larger, cylindrical version). The "Turtle,"
"Ferdinand" (Mod I) and "Beast" (Mod II) names came from the articles
in the press.
Mod I relied on feeling its way along the walls to find AC electrical
outlets. Mod II started that way and then a sonar guidance system was
added, using Zenith television remote control 40kHz audio
transducers, to allow it to go down the middle of the hallways and
avoid obstacles. Then to find AC outlets a video system was added on
top to watch the walls. There was a telemetry system to monitor the
states of the various systems in Mod II and to send it general
commands, like, "You are hungry" (when it wasn't). It all worked. With
about a 3 hour battery life, Mod II survived over 40 hours before a
mechanical failure stopped it.
Mod II was on the USA NBC network morning "Today" television show
(1964).
The mission of the robots was to survive in their environment, in the
APL hallways, with no external help. Other than the radio commands
for testing and demonstration purposes, like "You are hungry," they
were on their own.
The long term goal was unmanned automata to land on the Moon,
Mars, and elsewhere in space. The last work APL did before APL's funds
ran out, was John Chubbuck laying out the design for undersea robots.
All of these things did happen and are happening – later by others.
The hallways turned out to be more hazardous than expected for tiny,
wheeled robots: stairwells, hanging cables from construction, open
office doors into cluttered offices and labs, people, …
The robot logic was all hand-built, discrete logic gates and functions
using transistor-diode NOR gates, flip-flops, timers and some other
function blocks. Several gates were built into small plug-in modules.
Remember, integrated circuits were just getting off the ground, were
expensive, limited in capability and power hungry. A Philips transistor
was used, the smallest discrete transistor ever made.
The basic logic modules were plugged in several larger circuit boards.
Some of the most basic behavior was fixed by hard-wiring between
gates. The adaptive main behavior was programmed by plug-in cables
on a master patch-panel under a cover on top. This allowed changes
and additions as planned behavior patterns didn't work or the robot
encountered unexpected hazards.
The booms that went along the wall had an outline in switches of the
AC outlets. It first felt something of the right width of the wall plate,
then moved up and down to look for the top and bottom. The outlets
were not all at the same height. Then, if it found the plate, it tried to
plug in. The sockets were the US three wire variety. Some were upside
down.
If the first plug-in attempt didn't go in holes. The robots would next try
the upside down height. If it plugged in and found AC, then it would
charge up its batteries until they were full. If the robot didn't sense AC,
then the THWIT (The Hell With It) function kicked in, and the robot
unplugged and went on its way.
The front bumper of Mod and the hanging skirt around Mod II had
rollers with micro-switches outside the drive wheels to detect vertical
hazards such as stairwells or steep inclines.
Mod I only had wall-hugging travel guidance using its boom as the
feeler to stay near the walls.
The video system for Mod II used the then relatively new vidicon image
tubes. They system was set to watch for rectangular images with
about the right aspect ratio for the AC outlet wall plates. This could be
from all the way across the hall when Mod II was using its sonar
guidance, not wall-hugging, travel mode.