Then
d
n
a
NOW
ROBOT ANIMALS STRIVE TO
MATCH HUMANOIDS IN REALISM
by Tom Carroll
It didn’t take inventive designers and experimenters long to determine
that creating realistic robot human
beings was close to impossible. David
Hanson has come as close as anybody
in creating very realistic robotic human
faces and heads, and the Japanese
and Koreans have made some fairly
realistic complete human robot
bodies. But they are still a bit far off
to be considered identical to humans.
Animals, on the other hand, seem to
be what most robot experimenters
try to build when attempting to
FIGURE 1. The Electric Dog.
FIGURE 2. Electric Dog being
controlled by a flashlight.
replicate life forms.
Everything from baby harp seals,
hamsters, deer and moose, fish, birds,
snakes, and virtually every other type
of living creature has been re-created
in some form or another. It is still cats
and dogs that most experimenters
and potential manufacturers want to
create and distribute to the general
public.
We’ve been inundated with some
very sophisticated robotic pets for
several years now. Christmas will soon
be upon us and many Christmas wish
lists will include one or more of
these electronic marvels. Simple
semi-mechanical animals with
movable articulated legs, heads,
and mouths were constructed
many centuries ago, but it was
not until the age of spring-wound
automata that these devices
actually became a bit more realistic.
In the 1700s and 1800s, most
of the more sophisticated automata
were formed in the image of
humans and were ornately dressed
and coiffed. Many of today’s
automata that are intended to look
like human beings are very much in
the form of humanoid robots,
whereas the animal automata are
becoming more animal-like with
realistic fur, motions, and sounds.
In this article, I’d like to
examine more of why we have
created the many types of robot
animals we have rather than what
has been produced. Some were
created as more of a test platform
to prove control techniques such as
the electric dog we’ll discuss in a
moment. Many were intended to be
unique toys such as Pleo the dinosaur,
alien creatures such as the Furby, and
even flying robot insects. But still,
robot dogs seem to be the most
popular. Sony did deviate a bit in the
Aibo line when it created a cat instead
of a dog, but quickly went back to
canine production.
The Electric Dog
of 1912
The original ‘electric dog’ was
more of a proof of concept device or
scientific curiosity than a functional
synthetic pet as it was first called an
‘orientation mechanism.’ Designed by
US researchers John Hammond, Jr.
and Benjamin Miessner in 1912, this
anything-but-a-dog shown in Figure 1
allowed the men to perfect their
homing system for later use in
weapons. I’ve included this unique
device, not because it was a true
artificial animal, but because it was
one of the first determined efforts by
an experimenter to use simple AI
techniques to direct an autonomous
vehicle.
Figure 2 shows the robot being
controlled by a flashlight. It was
known as a ‘phototrophic self-directing robot’ in that it followed a
light using selenium photocells and a
simple relay circuit. The media people
of the day were amazed at the device,
especially when Miessner told them
“The electric dog, initially a ‘scientific
curiosity,’ may within the very near
76 SERVO 10.2009
