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Period: 360 BCE to 430 BCE
Creation of the first documented automaton
The vapor flying pigeon of Arquitas is said to be the first documented automaton. It was a wooden toy suspended from a rope, hollow and dove-shaped, which had a water reserve that was heated by a small flame below the device. Letting out the steam produced by some tiny holes in the back of the bird made it move. There isn´t an concrete date for the creation of the flying pigeon, but it´s said to be in the IV century B.C. -
1088
Automaton clock tower
Su Song, a chinese engineer from the XI century A.D., created a clock tower powered by water, where mannequins appeared from doors located in the tower to anunciate the hour. -
1206
First humanoid programmable robots
The same year of his death, a musulman inventor, Al Jazari, created a musicians band made out of automatons, which were in a boat floating in a lake. They used pegs to activate percussion instruments that entertained people during royal parties. -
1495
DA VINCI´S KNIGHT ROBOT DESIGN
The italian polymath Leonardo Da Vinci created in 1495 the designs for a fully-working humanoid knight automaton. It´s unknown if Da Vinci actually superated the design stage, but the automaton´s funcionality was lately comprobed. -
Digesting duck
The french engineer and inventor Jacques of Vaucanson created in 1738 a mechanical duck that was able to eat, digest, move it´s wings and excret. -
Karakuri toys
Hisashige Tanaka, a.k.a. the "japanese Edison", was a well-known inventor and he produced, along the first decade of the XIX century, different toys susch as an arch shooter, a tea cup waiter and a writer automaton. -
Implementation of the word "robot"
Carel Capek, in his book Rossum Universal Robots, is the first one to use the term robot to refer to the automatons, being the use of this word idea of his brother, Josef. The original word, robota, means "Hard Work" in Czech. -
AIBO, the robot pet
Sony produces the first AIBO (Artificial Intelligence Robot), a robot dog that gave the ilusion of learning and of being teaching a real pet. -
Creation of Asimo
Asimo, acronim for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, is created by Honda Motor Company Ltd. for the help of people with mobility problems and for the encourage of Children´s desire to learn math and science.
