Who built the first programmable robot? It's almost impossible to tell, and most people would put good money on Leonardo da Vinci. But now Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK, has traced the technology way back to ancient Alexandria.
In about 60 AD, a Greek engineer called Hero constructed a three-wheeled cart that could carry a group of automata to the front of a stage where they would perform for an audience. Power came from a falling weight that pulled on string wrapped round the cart's drive axle, and Sharkey reckons this string-based control mechanism is exactly equivalent to a modern programming language. He describes it in this week's issue of New Scientist magazine.
Our cart was made from a child's scooter, a broom handle, wood, string, and lead weights from an old sash window. And, fortunately for us, Hero left some advice in his writings: friction is a problem, he warned, so you'll need a smooth floor to run it on. He also recommended using pre-stretched string, and even gave us the cart's measurements: one cubit long, four palms wide and three palms high - that's 45cm long, 35cm wide and 23cm tall. After a bit of tweaking, we succeeded in making our cart move forwards, backwards, and turn.
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This is amazing considering that modern programming language is based on the same basic principles.
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