The Hopkins Beast

Controlled by dozens of transistors, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab's "Beast" wandered white hallways, centering by sonar, until its batteries ran low. Then it would seek black wall outlets with special photocell optics, and plug itself in by feel with its special recharging arm. After feeding, it would resume patrolling. Much more complex than Elsie, the Beast's deliberate coordinated actions can be compared to the bacteria hunting behaviors of large nucleated cells like paramecia or amoebae.

Applied Physics Laboratory – Johns Hopkins University (APL-JHU), mobile automata project.

A robot group built two functioning prototypes that roamed and "lived" in the hallways of the lab, avoiding hazards such as open stairwells and doors, hanging cables and people while searching for food in the form of AC power on the walls to recharge their batteries.

They used the senses of touch, hearing, feel and vision. Programming consisted of patch cables on patch boards connecting hand built logic circuits to set up behavior for avoidance, escape, searching and feeding.

No integrated circuits, no computers, no programming language. With a 3 hour battery life, the second prototype survived over 40 hours on one test before a simple mechanical failure disabled it.

The robots were referred to as Mod I ("Mod one," the little blocky one) and Mod II ("Mod two," the larger, cylindrical version). The "Turtle," "Ferdinand" (Mod I) and "Beast" (Mod II) names came from the articles in the press.

Mod I relied on feeling its way along the walls to find AC electrical outlets. Mod II started that way and then a sonar guidance system was added, using Zenith television remote control 40kHz audio transducers, to allow it to go down the middle of the hallways and avoid obstacles. Then to find AC outlets a video system was added on top to watch the walls. There was a telemetry system to monitor the states of the various systems in Mod II and to send it general commands, like, "You are hungry" (when it wasn't). It all worked. With about a 3 hour battery life, Mod II survived over 40 hours before a mechanical failure stopped it.

Mod II was on the USA NBC network morning "Today" television show (1964).

The mission of the robots was to survive in their environment, in the APL hallways, with no external help. Other than the radio commands for testing and demonstration purposes, like "You are hungry," they were on their own.

The long term goal was unmanned automata to land on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere in space. The last work APL did before APL's funds ran out, was John Chubbuck laying out the design for undersea robots. All of these things did happen and are happening – later by others.

The hallways turned out to be more hazardous than expected for tiny, wheeled robots: stairwells, hanging cables from construction, open office doors into cluttered offices and labs, people, …

'Pirouette', 'Rattle-out', and 'Panic' modes were patched in to help them escape from entangling cables caught on the booms, out of office "caves" and the like.

The robot logic was all hand-built, discrete logic gates and functions using transistor-diode NOR gates, flip-flops, timers and some other function blocks. Several gates were built into small plug-in modules. Remember, integrated circuits were just getting off the ground, were expensive, limited in capability and power hungry. A Philips transistor was used, the smallest discrete transistor ever made.

The basic logic modules were plugged in several larger circuit boards. Some of the most basic behavior was fixed by hard-wiring between gates. The adaptive main behavior was programmed by plug-in cables on a master patch-panel under a cover on top. This allowed changes and additions as planned behavior patterns didn't work or the robot encountered unexpected hazards.

The sense of feel was by micro-switches.

The booms that went along the wall had an outline in switches of the AC outlets. It first felt something of the right width of the wall plate, then moved up and down to look for the top and bottom. The outlets were not all at the same height. Then, if it found the plate, it tried to plug in. The sockets were the US three wire variety. Some were upside down.

If the first plug-in attempt didn't go in holes. The robots would next try the upside down height. If it plugged in and found AC, then it would charge up its batteries until they were full. If the robot didn't sense AC, then the THWIT (The Hell With It) function kicked in, and the robot unplugged and went on its way.

None of the outlets in the hallways were mounted sideways. That would have taken only a few more roller micro-switches on the boom face.

The front bumper of Mod and the hanging skirt around Mod II had rollers with micro-switches outside the drive wheels to detect vertical hazards such as stairwells or steep inclines.

Mod I only had wall-hugging travel guidance using its boom as the feeler to stay near the walls.

The video system for Mod II used the then relatively new vidicon image tubes. They system was set to watch for rectangular images with about the right aspect ratio for the AC outlet wall plates. This could be from all the way across the hall when Mod II was using its sonar guidance, not wall-hugging, travel mode.

The batteries were built of wet silver-cadmium cells, not nickel-cadmium, each cell about 3/4" by 2" by 3". Ag-Cd is smaller than Ni-Cd for the same energy capacity. There was one battery bank for the electronics and one for the wheel and boom motors.

1962-5 – Hopkins Beast Autonomous Robot Mod II (Sonar&Vision)

With Sonar using Zenith television remote control 40kHz audio transducers, and vision using the then new vidicon image tubes.

Mod II is actually facing forward, to the front. The boom arm if effectively its right-arm and extends when searching for an AC outlet. The Zenith ultrasonic transducers can be seen both on top and within the skirt. They were used for forward and limited sideways

sensing when travelling forward down a corridor. The hanging skirt had touch sensors when lower obstacles were encountered.

"Mar 31 1965" Photo No. 73738; UNDER THE SKIN….Leonard Scheer, left, William Whitmore with automaton, and Dennis Walters have removed the bumper and cover from automaton to examine the complex electronics.". Photo of three men examining and working on the electronics of a robot in a laboratory/shop environment.

You can see the vidicon tube clearly in this image. It is mounted vertically with a round 45deg. mirror pointing towards the wall. The viewing direction appears to be just in front of the electrical outlets, otherwise it would be pointed slightly backwards if to directly view the outlet or scan the wall.

In June 2008, Hopkins Beast was doing the rounds in the US with the "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination" exhibition. I was disappointed when the exhibition came to Australia in late 2009 and the Beast was not included.

Above: You can see where the arial plugs in. This was to send and receive signals from the remote telemetry unit.

Running hours = 1929, Battery-Charging hours = 1669., giving a total of 260 hours running autonomously. That's roughly 84% of its total life spent just "feeding". Its longest single run was for 40.6 hours before some simple mechanical failure stopped it.