Autonomous Mobile Robots and Multi-Robot Systems

Introduction

Eugene Kagan, Nir Shvalb, and Irad Ben‐Gal

I.1 Early History of Robots

The first known robot, a mechanical bird known as the “the Pigeon” actuated by a water stream, was built in the fourth century BCE by the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum.¹ Archytas constructed his robo‐bird out of wood and used steam to power its movements. A century and a half after that, in 250 BCE, the Greek physicist Ctesibius of Alexandria proposed another machine “clepsydra,” − literally, a water clock − that formed the main driving principles for mechanical devices of the ancient world. At about the same time (150–100 BCE), analog computation mechanisms were used to accurately compute astronomical events. The Antikythera clockwork mechanism was composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears. At the beginning of the Current Era, the Greek mathematician and engineer Heron of Alexandria (approximately 10–70 CE) described most of mechanisms of this kind and his own inventions, including the rocket‐reaction engine “Aeoliple”² and the wind‐powered organ, in the books Pneumatics and Automata³ (Hero of Alexandria 2009). These books predefined the development of the automated mechanical tools for more than a thousand years, even the Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) inventions.

Credit for the first sign of changing the ancient Greek paradigm of robotics is often given to the mathematician and inventor Al‐Jazari (1136–1206), an engineer of the Artuqid Palace in Diyarbakir, Turkey.⁴ In the