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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMpEeag7kkM ("APL Flashback: 1965 - The "Hopkins Beast" Mobile Automaton ", taken from the 2nd external link in the Wikipedia article, of the Mod II)

also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGFt28BiBY ("APL Flashback: 1964 - "Ferdinand" the Mobile Automaton", a similar device)

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Amazing how my generic Roomba does all those same behaviors (navigate a room with obstacles, find its own charger) shown in that first video, but it took another 60 years for such a thing to be a cheap consumer product.

Wonder how long it will take to find a Roomba that can be scheduled to run more than once every 24 hours? /J

It is much cheaper to make a prototype than making something at scale (although publishing the circuit diagrams and so forth might have been interesting. The biggest problem in this would be having a battery that would power a Roomba to do vacuuming without looking for an outlet every five minutes. Roombas also have edge detection so it doesn't fall down the stairs. But, all of the mother of all demo's technology took forty years to implement also.

> Roombas also have edge detection so it doesn't fall down the stairs.

From article, “It could also ultrasonically recognize the stairway and doorways to take appropriate action.”

Wow, sorry for diverting the topic a tiny bit but there's a strong star wars IV reminiscence in these vids. I wonder how common this robots were in the minds of people of the 60s/70s.

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