yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) (05/25/90)
In article <18151@well.sf.ca.us> nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes: >In article <1686@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> toms@fcs260c2.UUCP (Tom Schneider) writes: >>Has anyone built a robot that goes around using plugs when it can? ... > > Yes. The "Hopkins Beast", built in the 1960s, did exactly that. >It wandered around the halls of a large building, plugging itself in when >it needed a recharge. It used ultrasonics to keep its distance from the >walls, and a simple template matching vision system to recognize wall outlets. > > Unfortunately, we no longer seem to have the technology to build things >like that. Does anyone have references to any papers, articles, or tech reports, describing this Beast? Was this fully operational (could be left unsupervised to wander for days) or "demo operational" (could wander around long enough to impress funding agencies -- i.e. the length of a demo)? _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________