Vacuum tube based autonomous robots from the 1950s
I have W. Grey Walter's 1950 book, The Living Brain, but haven't read it (It's out of print, but you can buy a copy for as little as $1.60 on Amazon).
He was an interesting fellow. Kaden told me he was "the guy who postulated that the Old Testament 'tree of knowledge' was a veiled allusion to the psychogenic impact of flicker effects caused by the sun through palm leaves. Turns out that besides being a physiologist, ol' W Grey (the W. stands for William) was a pioneer in autonomous robotics with tube circuitry A.I.s."
Shown here is Elsie, a three-wheeled robot that had "a light sensor, touch sensor, propulsion motor, steering motor, and a two vacuum tube analog computer. Even with this simple design, Grey demonstrated that his turtles exhibited complex behaviors. He called his turtles Machina Speculatrix after their speculative tendency to explore their environment." Link
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Mark Frauenfelder
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