Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The idea of a “Robot” playing chess brings to mind the idea of a “humanoid” robot, like the NASA one from 2010, pictured after the 1983 robotic arm. However, Russia’s chess-playing “robot” is nothing a robotic arm of a style that has existed for many decades. There’s apparently nothing new or innovative about it apart from stupidly having it “play” chess. This was already an old idea in 1983. However, 1983 is the oldest image that could be found online.

Sixty Years Ago:
“1961 – The first industrial robot was online in a General Motors automobile factory in New Jersey. It was called UNIMATE.
1963 – The first artificial robotic arm to be controlled by a computer was designed. The Rancho Arm was designed as a tool for the handicapped and it’s six joints gave it the flexibility of a human arm.” https://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/ROV/history.html


Link: https://youtu.be/fixQWq3HNZg

“Unimate 500 PUMA (1983) and control unit at the Deutsches Museum”, Munich, CC-BY-SA By Theoprak via Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unimate_500_PUMA_Deutsches_Museum.jpg


NASA robot from 2010: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20100040493/downloads/20100040493.pdf

NASA 1985: “This paper describes the development of a nonlinear dynamic model for large oscillations of a robotic manipulator arm about a single joint.” https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19860004490/downloads/19860004490.pdf

Russia can send its dumb low tech industrial robotic arms, instead of soldiers, to Ukraine, since Russia’s entire goal is to break everything and control the natural resources and waterways.

All Russia believes in doing is breaking things! Russia’s “robots” aren’t sentient. Neither is its President or its soldiers!

Apparently the robotic arm was basic, primitive, with a basic timer and unable to react to a human. It apparently had no safety, either: “Chess robot grabs and breaks finger of seven-year-old opponent Moscow incident occurred because child ‘violated’ safety rules by taking turn too quickly, says official…. While robots are becoming more and more sophisticated, with the most modern models capable not just of interacting but actively cooperating with humans, most simply repeat the same basic actions – grab, move, put down – and neither know nor care if people get in the way….”https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/24/chess-robot-grabs-and-breaks-finger-of-seven-year-old-opponent-moscow

The chess playing robot seems to have a similar level of function to 1956 ones. They are more prevalent and surely cheaper now.
“Robots exhibit varying degrees of autonomy. Some robots are programmed to faithfully carry out specific actions over and over again (repetitive actions) without variation and with a high degree of accuracy. These actions are determined by programmed routines that specify the direction, acceleration, velocity, deceleration, and distance of a series of coordinated motions…
The earliest known industrial robot, conforming to the ISO definition was completed by “Bill” Griffith P. Taylor in 1937 and published in Meccano Magazine, March 1938.[11][12] The crane-like device was built almost entirely using Meccano parts, and powered by a single electric motor. Five axes of movement were possible, including grab and grab rotation. Automation was achieved using punched paper tape to energise solenoids, which would facilitate the movement of the crane’s control levers. The robot could stack wooden blocks in pre-programmed patterns. The number of motor revolutions required for each desired movement was first plotted on graph paper. This information was then transferred to the paper tape, which was also driven by the robot’s single motor…. George Devol applied for the first robotics patents in 1954 (granted in 1961). The first company to produce a robot was Unimation, founded by Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger in 1956. Unimation robots were also called programmable transfer machines since their main use at first was to transfer objects from one point to another, less than a dozen feet or so apart. They used hydraulic actuators and were programmed in joint coordinates, i.e. the angles of the various joints were stored during a teaching phase and replayed in operation. They were accurate to within 1/10,000 of an inch[13] (note: although accuracy is not an appropriate measure for robots, usually evaluated in terms of repeatability – see later). Unimation later licensed their technology to Kawasaki Heavy Industries and GKN, manufacturing Unimates in Japan and England respectively. For some time Unimation’s only competitor was Cincinnati Milacron Inc. of Ohio. This changed radically in the late 1970s when several big Japanese conglomerates began producing similar industrial robots…“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_robot
1937 Robot – https://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1937-the-robot-gargantua-bill-griffith-p-taylor-australiancanadian/

“Chess robot grabs and breaks finger of seven-year-old opponent“
Excerpt from The Guardian:
“Moscow incident occurred because child ‘violated’ safety rules by taking turn too quickly, says official

Played by humans, chess is a game of strategic thinking, calm concentration and patient intellectual endeavour. Violence does not usually come into it. The same, it seems, cannot always be said of machines.

Last week, according to Russian media outlets, a chess-playing robot, apparently unsettled by the quick responses of a seven-year-old boy, unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger during a match at the Moscow Open.

“The robot broke the child’s finger,” Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the TASS news agency https://archive.ph/Nt6SK after the incident, adding that the machine had played many previous exhibitions without upset. “This is of course bad.”…

While robots are becoming more and more sophisticated, with the most modern models capable not just of interacting but actively cooperating with humans, most simply repeat the same basic actions – grab, move, put down – and neither know nor care if people get in the way….”Excerpt courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd.” https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/24/chess-robot-grabs-and-breaks-finger-of-seven-year-old-opponent-moscow The TASS article also says that the robot was rented.

More details on Unimate 500 Puma (1983) photo:
“English: Unimate 500 Puma (1983). Industrial robot, control unit and computer terminal.
Exhibit of Deutsches Museum, Munich.
Deutsch: Industrieroboter Unimate 500 PUMA (1983), Steuereinheit und Terminal.
Ausstellungsstück des Deutschen Museums in München.
Date 20 July 2013
Source Own work
Author Theoprak”

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en