Carnegie Mellon Inducts Five New Members Into Robot Hall of Fame®

By: Byron Spice

Five robots, ranging from an iconic female humanoid in a classic silent film to a ubiquitous industrial robot that helped make electronics inexpensive and commonplace, were inducted into Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame® during a ceremony this June.

The third class of inductees includes Maria, the art deco star of Fritz Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis"; Gort, the metallic giant from an alien world in the 1951 sci-fi thriller "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; David, the boy-like android that stole his adoptive mother's heart in Steven Spielberg's "Artificial Intelligence: AI"; AIBO, Sony's dog-like robot pet that is also a robust research and teaching tool; and the Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA), a widely used type of industrial arm with motions especially suited to assembling consumer products.

The inductees were announced during an April reception marking the beginning of CS50, a four-day celebration of Carnegie Mellon's first 50 years of computer science education and research hosted by its School of Computer Science.

The five robots were formally inducted at a June 21 ceremony during the third annual RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition. The international business development event for mobile robotics and intelligent systems, produced by Robotics Trends Inc., was held at Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh.

"The inclusion of real-world robots, such as AIBO and the SCARA industrial arm, mapped very well to the 'business ready' theme of the RoboBusiness Conference, while their fictional counterparts Gort and Maria spoke to the imagination — perhaps the most important driver for what has been called the first new industry of the 21st century," said Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends.

James H. Morris, former dean of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, founded the hall of fame in 2003. Past inductees include the Mars Pathfinder rover, Honda's ASIMO walking robot and the "Star Wars" duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO.

"We decided to give awards to both real and fictional robots because the fictional ones provide inspiration to the real ones," Morris said. "Now, however, we see that some robots occupy a middle ground. AIBO is real but also entertaining. R2-D2 started off with (actor) Kenny Baker inside but then became automated. Eventually, our deliberations will confront the age-old question of real vs. fiction."

This year's inductees, chosen by an international jury of leading thinkers and technology developers, include the four-legged AIBO, an entertainment robot that was mass-marketed from 1999 until early this year. Owners could train the autonomous robot to understand 100 voice commands and recognize faces, and many reprogrammed AIBO to add new behaviors.

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