Shakey the robot

Shakey was the first mobile robot that could plan its own actions. Its development combined robotics, image processing and natural language processing.

It was developed in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Stanford Research Institute in the period 1966-1972 under the direction of Charles Rosen. Programming was done mostly in LISP.

Today, Shakey is in a display case in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California in the Silicon Valley.

In 2004, he was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame.

Sample application

After entering the English commands "push the block off the platform" at the associated computer console Shakey looks around, identifies a platform with a block on it and find a ramp. He pushes the ramp to the platform rolls over the ramp on the platform and moves the block of the platform.

Research results

The research with Shakey led to the development and improvement of the A * algorithm, a graph- based method of route optimization, and the Hough transform, an object identification method of the image processing.

Swell

• The Thinking Computer: Mind Inside Matter of Bertram Raphael, 1976
• Shakey video (RAM 96.1 MB)