Then
d
n
a
NOW
WHAT DOES A ROBOT LOOK LIKE?
by Tom Carroll
In the mid ‘90s, I was assisting with some robot demos at the
California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles for kids at the
museum’s two-week robot camp. A few of the children had physical motor
disabilities, but one young girl was blind, only having had sight for the first
few years of her young life. She asked me one question which has given
me a lot to think about over the years ... “What does a robot look like?”
What does a robot look like? What should a robot look like? Does a robot have to look a
particular way to be considered a robot?
These are seemingly simple but very complex
questions to ponder. Does a robot resemble a
roving pie tin like the i-Robot Roomba vacuum
cleaner? Are robots huge arms spitting sparks and
paint like those used in a car factory? Are they
small two pound creations with a wedge on the
front trying to knock a similar robot out of a Sumo
ring? Should they be humanoids like C-3PO of
Star Wars?
It’s doubtful that the average
kid (or adult) would be able to
recognize the first industrial robot
— the Unimate in Figure 1 from
the early ‘60s. To most people,
this robot looked more like a tank turret on a box
with an extendable arm instead of a gun. Yet, it
revolutionized manufacturing the world over.
Rossum’s Universal Robots
FIGURE 1.
The first
Unimate robot.
Most people today have become educated
enough to realize that the robots of science fiction
and the movies are not what exists in reality.
However, they still do not know what has been
developed over the past 90 years. Karel Capek’s
early play, “RUR” actually introduced
the world to the robots in 1920. Karel
wrote the play, but his brother, Josef,
actually coined the word robot from
the Czech word ‘robota’ which means
“drudgery” or “servitude.” Capek’s
Robots were more like biomechanical
beings than modern electro-mechanical
creations. Figure 2 shows a display
model of the robot from the 1923
New York production of RUR. As you
might have noticed, this robot is not a
suit worn by an actor (since the hip
joints cannot fit over a person’s legs).
The play was written in 1920,
premiered in Capek’s hometown of
Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1921, and
then debuted in New
York in 1922. This
unique play changed
FIGURE 2. The
1923 RUR robot
mockup.
78 SERVO 05.2010
