User:Rbfisher

The Freddy Robot Project

The Freddy (***dates***) and Freddy II robots (1973-1976) were two of the world's first assembly robots. The robot systems were based on a combination of research into mechanical robotics, computer vision, programming languages and automated planning. They were developed in the School of Artificial Intelligence (now part of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh).

Here is a picture of Freddy II.

Freddy II was a 5 degree of freedom manipulator with a large vertical 'hand' that could move up and down, rotate about the vertical axis and rotate objects held in its gripper about one horizontal axis. Two remaining translational degrees of freedom were generated by a translating work surface that translated beneath the gripper. The gripper was a 2 finger pinch gripper.

Freddy was initiated under the direction of Donald Michie and the Freddy II project under the direction of Rod Burstall and Robin Popplestone. Many people contributed to the project, including: Pat Ambler, Harry Barrow, Ilona Bellows, Chris Brown, Gregin Crawford, Stephen Salter, Aaron Sloman, Austin Tate, Ken Turner.

Freddy II was developed using the POP-2 programming language, one of the world's first functional programming languages. It was soon realized in the Freddy project that the 'move here, do this, move there' style of robot behavior programming (actuator or joint level programming) is tedious and also did not allow for the robot to cope with variations in part position, part shape and sensor noise. Consequently, the RAPT robot programming language was developed, in which robot behavior was specified at the object level. This means that robot goals were specified in terms of desired position relationships between the robot, objects and the scene, leaving the details of how to achieve the goals to the underlying software system. Although developed in the 1970's, RAPT is still considerably more advanced that commercial robot programming languages. Also of interest in the project was the use of structured light to obtain the 3D shape and position of the parts being manipulated.

More information can be found at the: Edinburgh's Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute page

The Freddy II robot is currently at the National Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh.

You can see a video of Freddy II (943 Mb) in action.