Tech Time Warp of the Week: Shakey the Robot, 1966

Rosen, a researcher at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, envisioned a roboperson driven by neural networks, algorithms that mimic the human brain. Much like its biological counterparts, it would have the power to see and sense its environment. As Rosen and his team wrote in a memo (.pdf) to DARPA, the Defense Department's research arm, describing the project, it would "perform reconnaissance missions" that would normally require human intelligence. DARPA eventually "got kind of excited about it," recalls Nils Nilsson, one of the leaders of the project, and the agency granted the researchers $750,000 -- more than $5 million in today's money -- to make it happen. The project didn't include true neutral networks -- in the 1960s, the technology just wasn't up to the sort of visual analysis, planning, and navigation Rosen and team wanted to explore -- but the automaton did indeed happen.