ROBOT II HALL OF FAME(TM)

Carnegie, Jan/Feb 2004

Real and Imagined Robots unite as Carnegie Mellon and Carnegie Science Center announce the first inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame

What is the Robot Hall of Fame? It was conceived by Carnegie Mellon's James Morris, dean of Computer Science, who assembled a panel of 13 world-wide experts to choose the most significant robots, real and fictional, that have impacted the lives of human beings. After 25 years of leadership in robotics science, Carnegie Mellon wanted to showcase Pittsburgh as the place where robots are really understood. The university then turned to Carnegie Science Center as its public partner in this enterprise. Ellsworth Brown, president of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, was on the panel that selected the first four robots for induction into the Hall.

At Carnegie Science Center the display for the Robot Hall of Fame is located at the entrance to Robotics, the Science Center exhibition that demonstrates how robotic technology has changed modern life. This entertaining, hands-on exhibit can be seen through September 6, 2004. To share the Robot Hall of Fame with the rest of the world, Carnegie Mellon asked Wall-to-Wall Studios of Pittsburgh to develop an online site at www.robothalloffame.org.

Robots have a long history in the human imagination, from moving statues in the time of the ancient Greeks to automatons in the 1700s that could play chess. Even the 19th century Pinocchio was a talking piece of wood-a humanoid-that wanted to become a real boy.

In our time, fictional robots have become movie stars. In the Star Wars trilogy, the chirping, whistling droid R2-D2 fascinated people all over the world, including James Morris, dean of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. "R2-D2 represents our highest hope for what robots might do for humans," Morris says. "He performs countless services and saves the lives of humans many times. He seems to understand technology deeply and responds to human needs unerringly. He does not try to imitate humans or compete with them. He's all robot!"

On behalf of Carnegie Museums, President Ellsworth Brown says, "Through the work of our staff at Carnegie Science Center, we share the university's passion for this exciting area of scientific development, and we're committed to working together to engage and educate wider audiences in the many applications of robots."

And the Winners Are...

The inauguration ceremony at Carnegie Science Center on November 11, 2003, drew more than 300 people, including representatives for the four famous robots nominated-R2-D2, HAL, Unimate, and Sojourner.

R2-D2's movie-star opposite is the malevolent HAL from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the judges who put HAL in the Hall of Fame agreed that he posed profound questions about robots. HAL is a fiction created by writer Arthur C. Clark, but HAL has had a lasting effect in the real world. The dulcet-toned but ultimately dangerous HAL has inspired astronauts, scientists, and philosophers to duplicate its powers, and also caused people to fear that intelligent machines go out of control, they could prove fatal to humankind.

Real life robots have always been super-achievers, making life better for humans by performing monotonous, difficult, and dangerous jobs, as well as tasks impossible for people to do. Two remarkable robots inaugurated into the Robot Hall of Fame are the industrial-strength Unimate-a robotic arm now used universally in manufacturing-and the lightweight genius of Martian research, Sojourner, a little machine that lived seven times longer than expected while it roved the surface of the red planet and sent back invaluable data.

Accepting the award for the robotic arm Unimate was the "father of robotics," Joseph F. Engleberger, who designed it for use on a General Motors assembly line in 1961. Today the 4,000-pound arm has evolved into an industry-standard machine that does everything from forging to spray painting. "If you are in one of those businesses today and you're not using robots, you're losing money,' Engleberger says.

Representing NASA and Sojourner (officially known as Mars Pathfinder Microrover Flight Experiment) was Jake Matiljevic, manager of the project. In 1997 the three-month mission made history by broadcasting details about the surface of Mars from 122 million miles away. Matiljevic pointed out that Sojourner was the forerunner of two new Mars Exploration Rovers, called Spirit and Opportunity, scheduled to land on the Red Planet in January 2004.

To accept the award for R2-D2 and Lucasfilm was the director of special programs, Kathleen Holliday, as well as two key actors in the original film-David Prowse who played Darth Vader, and Kenny Baker who played R2-D2.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clark, who lives in Sri Lanka, could not attend, but sent a letter to be read. In it, he noted that HAL is a character that has stuck to him: "I've programmed my computer so that when I ask it to do something impossible, it answers soothingly, 'I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that.'"