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The 'first electronic person' was a box on wheels
Welcome to Time Machines, where we offer up a selection of mechanical oddities, milestone gadgets and unique inventions to test out your tech-history skills. Some humans have enough trouble navigating an apartment without stubbing their toes, and that's with a robust onboard computer, finely tuned sensory apparatuses and years of practice in the field. Shakey was a pioneering bot under the tutelage of the SRI Artificial Intelligence Center's (AIC) research team, and it would take its share of bumps and wrong turns as it learned its way around the lab. It was born in 1966 as an artificial intelligence project to develop robots with the ability to navigate real-world environments and make decisions on the fly in order to overcome obstacles and solve complex problems. Life magazine even gave Shakey the title of "first electronic person" for its efforts in a 1970 article, vaulting it to near peer-level status with its toe-crunching creators.
