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A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics
The tasks taken on by the Armatron aren’t so different from the ones AI is tackling today.
A few years ago I found my Armatron, and when I opened the case to get it working again, I was startled to find that other than the compartment for the pair of D-cell batteries, a switch, and a tiny three-volt DC motor, this thing was totally devoid of any electronic components. One of them was Adam Borrell, a mechanical design engineer who has been building robots for 15 years at Boston Dynamics, including Petman, the YouTube-famous Atlas, and the dog-size quadruped called Spot. Eric Paulos, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, recalls nagging his parents about what an educational gift Armatron would make.
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