Analog robot
An analog robot is a type of robot which uses analog circuitry to go toward a simple goal such as finding more light or responding to sound. The first real analog robot was invented in the 1940s by William Grey Walter. The name of these robots were ELSIE and ELMER (Electro Mechanical Robot). The original circuitry was developed using two vacuum tubes and a photocell to search and follow a light. Recently a kind of analog robots was developed by Mark Tilden.
Mario Taddei
Among the vast number of projects of Leonardo, there is a “mechanical knight” that has entered into the common imagination. In 1957 Carlo Pedretti was the first person to discover it, hidden amongst da Vinci’s countless designs. The mechanical knight was again mentioned in 1974, in the Codex Madrid edited by Ladislao Reti. Nevertheless, there was no attempt to reconstruct it until 1996. It was then that Mark Rosheim published an independent study of the robot, followed by a joint enterprise with the Florence Institute and Museum of the History of Science which mounted an exhibition with an entire section dedicated to Rosheim’s research on the subject. However, it was only in 2002 that Rosheim built a complete physical model for a BBC documentary. Since then, many exhibitions and museums of da Vinci’s models have included a soldier on wheels labeled, “Leonardo’s robot”.