Shakey the Robot

The first mobile robot to reason about its own actions. Developed at Stanford Research Institute, Shakey combined computer vision, natural language understanding, and logical planning in a single system. It could navigate rooms, push objects, and plan multi-step actions — revolutionary for the era. Shakey introduced the A* search algorithm and the Hough transform, techniques still fundamental to robotics and computer science today. It demonstrated that a machine could perceive the world, build a model, and act on it autonomously. The robot was controlled by an SDS 940 computer connected via radio link.