cybernetics

The new robotic and artificial intelligence technologies descend from  an ancient scientific discipline: Cybernetics.
The etymology of the word "Cybernetics" has very ancient origins, as it derives from  the Greek where κυβερντης (kybernetes) and had the literal meaning of "helmsman", "he who pilots a ship".

 

Cybernetics became a formalized field of study only in the 20th century,  thanks to the contribution of some great experts in electronics,  mathematics and robotics such as Norbert Wiener,  McCulloch, Alan Turing and W. Gray Walter.

 

The latter, W. Gray Walter, was among the first cybernetics scholars,  capable of creating self-propelled autonomous machines ("turtles")  to illustrate the functioning modes of some brain mechanisms.

 

Between 1948 and 1949 Walter, thanks to the experiences gained on  radar-based targeting systems and guided missiles, produced two examples of the first series, called Machina speculatrix, to which he gave the nicknames "Elmer" (ELectroMEchanical Robot)
and "Elsie" (acronym for Electro Light Sensitive with Internal and External stability)
depending on the version.
 

These "robots", ancestors of today's terrestrial drones, were attracted by light that was not too strong,  while they were repelled by light with an intensity above a certain level,
and by encountering obstacles.
 

These simple rules produced unpredictable and apparently complex behaviors,
which might have given the impression of free and autonomous activity,
and which Walter believed would be accepted as a sign of a certain degree of awareness
if observed in an animal.

 

 It all starts from here!