OBJECT RECORD / AIM-ROB-1969-001
Shakey
A wheeled robot linked cameras and touch sensors to a large remote computer for bounded room tasks.
The surviving Shakey robot photographed on display at the Computer History Museum on 10 January 2007.
“Shakey.png” — Marshall Astor; Sanchom (source crop) Source crop; local copies resized and re-encoded as WebP. No generative alteration.MATERIAL RECORD
The object, not only the idea.
- Object type
- Shakey mobile robot
- Collection
- Computer History Museum
- Object ID
- X279.83
- Institution status
- On view · status checked
Physical measurements
CURATORIAL READING
Why it is here
The Computer History Museum dates Shakey to 1969, records an overall size of 69 × 47 × 47 inches, and names SRI as manufacturer. The object makes a distributed early robot system visible: cameras and touch sensors on a mobile body, computation elsewhere, and instructions translated into planned actions.
Evidence boundary
Do not read this as general or fully onboard autonomy. The catalogue explicitly places control in a large remote computer, while the surviving body carried sensors and motion hardware. Its current display status was checked on 11 September 2026, not promised permanently. The copyrighted catalogue image is not reproduced; the separate 2007 visitor photograph shown here carries its own CC BY-SA 2.0 record.
03 / CONNECT PERCEPTION TO ACTION
Position in the guided path
A wheeled body, radio link, and remote computer close a bounded planning loop.
Back to the object room →PROVENANCE
Source trail
Computer History Museum ·
Computer History Museum ·
Wikimedia Commons ·
