Robots that rock: Four robots from fiction and the real world are being inducted into Carnegie Mellon University’s
Robot Hall of Fame tonight as the inaugural honorees. The selections are as legendary in robotics as Babe Ruth of the Yankees and Roy Hobbs of “The Natural” are in baseball:
Sojourner: It was only about the size of a microwave oven, but the
Mars Pathfinder rover made a planet-sized name for itself back in 1997 when it sent back pictures from the Red Planet. “For the first time, a thinking robot equipped with sophisticated laser eyes and automated programming reacted to unplanned events on the surface of another planet,” the Hall of Fame says in its
citation.
Unimate: The two-ton GM assembly-line
robotic arm, conceived in 1956 and first put to work in 1961, is considered the world’s first industrial robot. It did welding work on die castings, marking a milestone in the automation of similarly repetitive, unpleasant tasks. “Unimate is a blue-collar robot that has earned its place in history,” the
citation reads.
R2-D2: This fictional character is arguably the
unsung star of the “Star Wars” show — an automaton who bails out the movie epic’s harried humans more than once, chirping and beeping its way into our hearts. “He does not try to imitate humans or compete with them. He’s all robot!” jury moderator James Morris says in the
citation.
HAL 9000: If R2-D2 seemed almost humanly warm and fuzzy,
HAL 9000 was cold, calculating and not afraid to violate the Laws of Robotics in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In the process, he became one of the best-known symbols of technology run amok. “HAL has had a lasting effect not only on fiction, but also on the real world,” the
citation says.
The honorees were selected by a human jury that included "2001" author Arthur C. Clarke, "Sims" sage Will Wright and other luminaries of the robo-sim world. Carnegie Mellon is
soliciting nominees for future Hall of Fame consideration. Scientific robots are judged on the basis of skill and utility, entertainment robots have to be functioning autonomous devices that have achieved a significant audience, and fictional robots should be world-famous characters that have helped formed our opinions about the function and value of all robots.
"Our goal is to create a permanent, interactive exhibition involving robots that will educate and entertain a wide variety of audiences," Morris, who is dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, said in a written statement.
The next batch of honorees will be announced in October 2004. But in the meantime, I'm curious which robots you'd consider worthy of recognition.
Send in your suggestions and I’ll pass along the top picks. For more about the decades-long march of the robots, check out our
online time line.
