A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics

Summary

“It was just endless exploration of picking stuff up and moving it around and even just watching it move. It was mesmerizing to me. I felt like I really owned my own little robot,” he recalls. “I cherish this thing. I still have it to this day, and it’s still working.” The Armatron on the cover of the November/December 1982 issue of Robotics Age magazine.PUBLIC DOMAIN Today, Paulos builds robots and teaches his students how to build their own. He challenges them to solve problems within constraints, such as building with cardboard or Play-Doh; he believes the restrictions facing Watanabe and his team ultimately forced them to be more creative in their engineering. It’s not very hard to draw connections between the Armatron—an impossibly analog robot—and highly advanced machines that are today learning to move in incredible new ways, powered by AI advancements like computer vision and reinforcement learning. Paulos sees parallels between the problems he tackled as a kid with his Armatron and those that researchers are still trying to deal with today: “What happens when you pick things up and they’re too heavy, but you can sort of pick it up if you approach it from different angles? Or how do you grip things? There’s research to this day using AI to try to figure out optimal ways to grab objects that [a robot] sees in a bin or out in the world.” While AI may be taking over the world of robotics, the field still requires engineers—builders and tinkerers who can problem-solve in the physical world. A page from the 1984 Radio Shack catalogue, featuring the Armatron for $31.95.COURTESY OF RADIOSHACKCATALOGS.COM The Armatron encouraged kids to explore these analog mechanics, a reminder that not all breakthroughs happen on a computer screen. And that hands-on curiosity hasn’t faded. Today, a new generation of fans are rediscovering the Armatron through online communities and DIY modifications. Dozens of Armatron videos are on YouTube, including one where the arm has been mo...