Robot
Walter stressed the importance of using purely analogue electronics to simulate brain processes at a time when his contemporaries such as Alan Turing and John von Neumann were all turning towards a view of mental processes in terms of digital computation. His work inspired subsequent generations of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Mark Tilden. Modern incarnations of Walter's "turtles" may be found in the form of BEAM robotics.
The first digitally operated and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was ultimately called the Unimate. This ultimately laid the foundations of the modern robotics industry. Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and stack them. Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry.
History of robots
The term "robot" was first used in a play published by the Czech Karel Čapek in 1920. "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots) was a satire, robots were manufactured biological beings that performed all unpleasant manual labor. According to Čapek, the word was created by his brother Josef from the Czech "robota", meaning servitude. The play "R.U.R," replaced the popular use of the word "automaton". However, until the 1950s "robot" was pronounced "robit" in films, radio and television programs: examples are "The Lonely" episode of the TV series "The Twilight Zone", first aired on 15 November 1959, and the sci-fi radio program "X Minus One".