Move over Google Glass and Oculus Rift. Robot vision has been around for a long time.
James Cameron’s final battle with the Terminator occurs in a fully
Robotic factory with vintage Bots from the 1980’s. Here are some early
Robotic brains staring with the IRI 256.
This 1980’s Robot is based on the same brain as the original Mac but
with a zero wait state 1 MIP MC68000 version of the chip. It can
actually visualize objects in low-res grayscale. The company
published some interesting rules of Robotics. This microcomputer was
Torso mounted using a 4G, UNIX-based API called Robotic Control
Language. There was also a safety protocol inhibiting the Robot’s
behavior around its human handlers.
The company went broke right around the time they received a patent
for Robot Vision so it was assigned to a stronger company. Which brings
us to our next item. GE Fanuc
