Shakey was an advanced mobile robot built decades ago that pioneered key concepts in robotics and artificial intelligence that we still rely on today. I want to give you a comprehensive picture of Shakey‘s history, capabilities, and lasting impacts – strap in for a fun tech history tour!
When and Why Shakey was Created
In the 1960s, the cutting edge of "smart" machines were things like calculators and very basic computers. Robotics and AI as we know them today barely existed. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wanted to change that.
So in 1966 they funded a team of researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) with over $5 million (in today‘s money) to create Shakey – the world‘s first mobile robot that could perceive its surroundings and actively reason about them.
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| Shakey and its creators – Charles Rosen is second from left |
The project leads Charles Rosen, Peter Hart, and Nils Nilsson had a vision for Shakey as the first embodiment of an autonomous, intelligent machine. Here‘s a quote from Rosen on their goals:
"We wanted to create a system that combines robotic and AI applications to perform logical reasoning tasks. Shakey demonstrates the feasibility of building a reasoning machine in physical form."
Next I‘ll dive into details on how they brought Shakey to life…
How Shakey Worked – Perceiving, Thinking, and Navigating
Shakey was roughly 5 foot 7 inches tall and weighed over 500lb. It had 3 main modules stacked vertically, as seen here:
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| Shakey Closeup – Camera, Logic, Mobility Modules |
Using its camera and rangefinder sensors, Shakey could perceive shapes, objects, and walls in its surroundings. It constructed abstract representations of these obstacles that it used to navigate rooms.
Its "brain" ran on an SDS 940 mainframe, later upgraded to a DEC PDP-10 minicomputer. Shakey was programmed in the LISP language – an early platform common in AI. Custom software modules handled computer vision, pathfinding, command processing and more.
Shakey also had a module for executing high-level STRIPS planning algorithms that arranged sequences of actions to achieve goals. For example, provided a goal like "push the block off the platform", Shakey would independently plan navigation paths and block-pushing motions to accomplish this.
Let‘s look at how Shakey navigated its world…
How Shakey Navigated and Solved Problems
Researchers constructed a small world for Shakey with…