In the 1970s, newspapers believed that we will be living in homes where a robot plays a prominent role.
“Uses for robots are constantly developing,” you’d read in the Post-Gazette in 1979, “A robot manufacturer predicts the robotized home will be with us by the end of the century — all the appliances in the home would be bought so that the robot could repair then as well as carry out many other chores it would be programmed for.”
Wouldn’t it be nice?
CMU’s Robotics Institute developed, demonstrated and in the ‘70 and ’80s kept introducing cool, but somewhat simplistic robots that could change lives. Some of the robots looked… useless, for example, “the robot arm that could lift a stack of mail or carefully pick up a flower without damaging it.”
Researchers, it looks like — based on the images we found — spent too much time focused on developing robots’ ability to pick up stuff: notebooks, flowers, garbage, steaks and a french toast.
Robotics researchers in Pittsburgh had a noble motivation while developing new robots, to make them more sophisticated, keep expanding a list of tasks they could perform. Some were hoping that robots could help the elderly and disabled, to make their lives easier and more independent.
There were robots built as luxury items or their development was driven by needs of the rich. In 1986, CMU in collaboration with MIT and a private firm based in Pittsburgh introduced “a fearsome 4 feet tall robot, weighing 480 pounds that could move at up to 5 miles per hour. He had a 360-degree field of vision and could even ‘see’ through the walls.” His name was Sentry. Sentry was distributed by a security firm in Pittsburgh. We are not so sure how popular he was. One thing is certain though: you don’t see robots guarding properties, celebrities or politicians — advances in non-robot technology made them irrelevant.
Robot makers of the 1950s were less about utility. Westinghouse, for example, built a mechanical man named Elektro. Elektro’s claim to fame was his skill to smoke a cigarette. He was also an official guest on KDKA-TV. His sole purpose — and that’s pure speculation — was to sit around and smoke.
