Making Simple Robots

Chapter 3. Unevolved Robots

There are minimal elegant solutions to building capable devices so long as they spend their energies on themselves and not their “masters.”

— Mark W. Tilden

How simple can a robot get and still be considered a robot? That’s a question many robot makers have taken as a challenge. Most people would agree that a doll or a puppet that only moves when pulled or pushed by a person is not a robot. But how about a remote control model rover, which adds a layer of electronics between the human and the object? Is something a robot if its sensor is a mechanical on-off switch rather than a logic gate in a computer program? Or if its seemingly smart response to the environment around it is really a random series of movements? ...