Chapter 1: Imagination — Birth of Robotics
Human-looking robots capture our imagination and keep us awed with innovation; we want them to help us: make our lives more comfortable and safe; but everything around us seems to be changing at an exponential pace, we risk drifting with no clear sense of direction.
To hold the steering wheel firmly, we have to understand where our boat of human creation is heading; we have to rewind the tape and look at the bigger picture.
In this age of constant change it’s easy to forget that robotics started somewhere; that there is a clear connecting line between past and present: a world-transforming chain reaction.
We will walk this fascinating road of discovery along side the grand masters of thought and artificial intelligence, unveiling the forces which shape the present and influence the future.
Let’s start in the beginning, when there was only a dream: an abstract notion. Tales of gods and mystical forces.
Mythology: a dream
Understanding this centuries long thread, takes us back to when Greek philosophers strolled the dry, stone-paved streets of ancient Greece.
The year is 800 B.C.E, Greek mythology emerges as a medium of cultural unity; a shared vocabulary for describing and questioning the strange phenomena around the human existence. [1]
A particular question from this period still persists to this day: what makes us humans so different from any living and non-living thing in the world? [2]
This question, materializes in myths like Pygmalion and Galatea [3]. Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor, carved a woman out of ivory. His statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it. At the altar of Aphrodite he wished for a bride in likeness to his ivory girl. When he returned, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm, the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion’s wish.
Or Talos, a gift given in love to Europa by Zeus. A giant, living, bronze automaton, forged by Hephaestus. The giant was given the task of patrolling the island and circled it three times a day, driving off pirates with rocks [4]
Both are a mythical metaphor for the very idea of robotics: breathing life into matter (animating).
But it is Hephaestus, the god of metallurgy, who is credited with the first recorded incarnation of a robot like creature [5]. What in the myths of Talos and Galatea is a mystical concept, in Homer’s description of Hephaestus’ curious helpers, has a very concrete mechanical meaning.
“( … ) He was working on twenty tripods which were to stand against the wall of his strong-founded dwelling. And he had set golden wheels underneath the base of each one so that of their own motion they could wheel into the immortal gathering, and return to his house: a wonder to look at.’’ — Homer, Iliad 18.370–379
Homer describes a mechanical apparatus, traveling on own accord from his house to the Olympus. Millennia later, this myth is the first step in a field we now call robotics.
A small, albeit important, shift in perspective, slowly moves us away from the mythological, abstract, view into the realm of the concrete: animating matter with mechanical means.
Origin of the machine
Machines both mechanical and electrical are commonplace in the modern world. But when did they first come into existence?
Imagination and discovery come hand in hand; shortly after Homer’s description of Hephaestus’ helpers, around 270BC, Ctesiphon of Alexandria explores intricate mechanical mechanisms to create motion [6].
Through a series of water flows the Greek inventor is able to control motion in such a precise manner that his clocks, clepsydras, remained the reigning time measurement device for centuries [7].
In the same spirit, Archimedes paved the way for a theoretical understanding of movement through his writings on apparatus such as levers in “On the Equilibrium of Planes” [8].
Following these footsteps, Heron of Alexandria is attributed with the invention of the first steam engine, the Aeolipile [9]. His list of achievements in the field is vast and include the texts Pneumatica, Mechanica and Automata, where he describes hundreds of different mechanisms for creating motion [10].
It is around this time that Aristotle, with almost surreal foresight, ponders about the role of automation in society. More than two millennia later this is a statement which might cause great anxiety or a feeling of freedom and progress, depending on who you ask.
“If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it… then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords.” — Aristotle
These great Greek inventors set the stage for many future innovations. Experimental, but crucial contributions which compounded into the field we now call Robotics.
Synopsis
Aligned with our quest for understanding the past, in this chapter we saw how humans reasoned about life itself: sharing myths; how, without an understanding about what makes us different from animals or the non-living world, human life seems mystical.
Then, the narrative shifted away from a very abstract concept to a more tangible, physical description: Hephaestus’ tripod automatons.
It is the mechanical automaton that finally breaks the belief; ushers in an era of experimentation and testing the boundaries: a rise of the mechanical understanding of the world.
Next in the series, we will see how this new world view shaped the minds of generations to come, poised in seeing our bodies and whole economies as mechanical clockwork. Shaking the very foundation on what it means to be human.
About Human Robots. As robots become more human, our very human foundations are shaken. What does it mean to be human in an age of algorithmic intelligence? In this series of articles we will explore the forces which shape the field of robotics, so we can leverage them to guarantee a socially and resource wise sustainable future.
Paul Schydlo. apiring Roboticist for Social Good. Robotics PhD student at the Institute for Systems and Robotics in Lisbon.
References
[1] Hyers, Conradl (1984). The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science
[2] https://www.ancient-greece.org/culture/mythology/origins-of-man.html
[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pygmalion
[4] http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GiganteTalos.html
[5] https://www.greekmythology.com/Olympians/Hephaestus/hephaestus.html
[6] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ctesibius-of-Alexandria
[7] John G. Landels: “Water-Clocks and Time Measurement in Classical Antiquity”, “Endeavour”, Vol. 3, №1 (1979)
[8] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/archimedes.shtml
[9] https://www.britannica.com/technology/aeolipile
[10] http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/greekautomata.htm
