Shakey the Robot was the first general-purpose mobile robot to be able to reason about its own actions. While other robots would have to be instructed on each individual step of completing a larger task, Shakey could analyze the command and break it down into basic chunks by itself. Due to its nature, the project combined research in robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing. Because of this, it was the first project that melded logical reasoning and physical action.
Shakey was developed at the Artificial Intelligence Center of Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI International) in 1966 through 1972 with Charles Rosen as project manager. Other major contributors included Nils Nilsson, Alfred Brain, Bertram Raphael, Richard Duda, Peter Hart, Richard Fikes, Richard Waldinger, Thomas Garvey, Jay Tenenbaum, and Michael Wilber. The robot's programming was primarily done in LISP. The STRIPS planner it used was conceived as the main planning component for the software it utilized.
Now retired from active duty, Shakey is currently on view in a glass display case at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
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As the first robot that was a logical, goal-based agent, Shakey experienced a limited world. A version of Shakey's world could contain a number of rooms connected by corridors, with doors and light switches available for the robot to interact with. Shakey had a short list of available actions within its planner. These actions involved traveling from one location to another, turning the light switches on and off, opening and closing the doors, climbing up and down from rigid objects, and pushing movable objects around. The STRIPS planner was able to devise a plan to enact all of the available actions, even though Shakey himself did not have the capability to execute all the actions within the plan personally.
An operator types the command "push the block off the platform" at a computer console.
Shakey looks around, identifies a platform with a block on it, and locates a ramp in order to reach the platform. Shakey then pushes the ramp over to the platform, rolls up the ramp onto the platform, and pushes the block off the platform. Mission accomplished.