Research history Robotics

Unimate was an industrial robotic arm designed by George C. Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger and built by Unimation; in 1961 it became the first robot installed on an assembly line, unloading a die-casting press at a General Motors plant.

Shakey was a mobile robot built at SRI International between 1966 and 1972, the first AI-based mobile robot that could perceive and reason about its surroundings and act without step-by-step instructions. Its project produced the A* search algorithm and the STRIPS planning system.

Honda's P2, announced in December 1996, was presented as the world's first bipedal humanoid walking robot: a 1,820 mm, 210 kg machine that walked, climbed stairs and pushed carts without cables, and led to ASIMO.

A small NASA rover that landed on Mars on July 4, 1997 with the Mars Pathfinder lander and became the first wheeled vehicle operated on another planet.

Sony's ERS-110, announced in May 1999, was the first AIBO: a four-legged autonomous entertainment robot that learned from interaction with its owner and expressed emotions.

ASIMO is a humanoid robot Honda announced in Tokyo on 20 November 2000, built to walk, climb stairs and work in human-sized spaces; successive versions ran faster and handled objects until its last regular demonstration in 2022.

Stanley is the Stanford University robotic vehicle that won DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge, completing a 132-mile desert course autonomously in 6 hours 53 minutes and claiming the $2 million prize.

Atlas was a humanoid disaster-response robot built by Boston Dynamics for DARPA, unveiled on 11 July 2013 and handed to teams in the DARPA Robotics Challenge; its hydraulic line was retired in 2024.

BigDog is a four-legged robot built by Boston Dynamics with DARPA funding, designed as a robotic pack mule that could carry loads over terrain too rough for conventional vehicles.

Robonaut 2 is a humanoid robot built jointly by NASA and General Motors that flew to the International Space Station in 2011 to show how dexterous robots behave in orbit, and later gained legs to move around inside the station.

Boston Dynamics' 2016 generation of the Atlas humanoid, called Atlas HD or hydraulic Atlas: smaller, lighter and more agile than earlier versions, electrically powered and hydraulically actuated, and retired in 2024.

A four-wheeled planetary rover prototype built at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute with NASA funding, Nomad tested autonomous driving and rock analysis in Antarctica, hunting meteorites on the ice without step-by-step human control.

PackBot is iRobot's tactical mobile robot, developed under a 1998 DARPA contract. It carried out search work at the World Trade Center site in 2001 and was first deployed by the US military in 2002.

Honda's P1 was the first humanoid in Honda's P series, built during 1993–1997 research. Standing 1,915 mm and weighing 175 kg, it combined bipedal legs with a torso and arms, running on external power and an external computer.

Honda's P3, completed in September 1997, is a completely independent bipedal humanoid walking robot, 1,600 mm tall and 130 kg; Honda later called ASIMO its further evolved version.

Handle was a Boston Dynamics research robot that balanced on two wheels and used Atlas-derived arms to move objects; the company credits it with truck unloading and pallet building, and says the work led to its warehouse robot Stretch.