Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!yamauchi
From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Johns Hopkins Beast (was Re: Cotton Dockers)
Keywords: plugs
Message-ID: <1990May25.160509.14535@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 25 May 90 16:05:09 GMT
References: <1618@dinl.mmc.UUCP> <1686@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> <18151@well.sf.ca.us>
Reply-To: yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Dept
Lines: 23

In article <18151@well.sf.ca.us> nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes:
>In article <1686@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> toms@fcs260c2.UUCP (Tom Schneider) writes:
>>Has anyone built a robot that goes around using plugs when it can? ...
>
>     Yes.  The "Hopkins Beast", built in the 1960s, did exactly that.
>It wandered around the halls of a large building, plugging itself in when
>it needed a recharge.  It used ultrasonics to keep its distance from the
>walls, and a simple template matching vision system to recognize wall outlets.
>
>     Unfortunately, we no longer seem to have the technology to build things
>like that.  

Does anyone have references to any papers, articles, or tech reports,
describing this Beast?  Was this fully operational (could be left
unsupervised to wander for days) or "demo operational" (could wander
around long enough to impress funding agencies -- i.e. the length of a
demo)?

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Brian Yamauchi				University of Rochester
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Computer Science Department
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