CMU in Pennsylvania is creating a “Robot hall of Fame” to honor great bots, both real and fictional. The first inductees will be honored this fall, and plans for the hall include interactive and educational exhibits about robotics, as well as a possible arena for RoboCup robotic soccer competitions.
Inductees to the hall will be selected by a 10-member jury that includes noted roboticist Rodney Brooks, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” [CMU Computer Science Dean James] Morris expects two to five robots will be inducted each year, including real robots that do actual work or research as well as fictional robots that have fired the public’s imagination. The jury is still discussing the criteria, but some robots would seem to be shoo-ins.
“Arthur C. Clarke has mentioned HAL twice now,” Morris noted, referring to the HAL 9000 computer that controlled a robotic spaceship and ultimately turned villainous in “2001.” CMU could nominate a few of its own, such as the NavLab series of automated vehicles; Dante II, the walking robot that explored the inside of an active volcano; and Rover, the robot that retrieved sediment samples from the crippled Three Mile Island reactor. NASA’s Sojourner robot, which captivated an international audience when it explored Mars in 1997, is another likely nominee, as could be any number of robotic spacecraft, such as the Voyagers.
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