Remote manipulator

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Nevada Test Site
.

A remote manipulator, also known as a telefactor, telemanipulator, or waldo (after the 1942 short story "

claw crane
game.

History

Albert Gore Sr operating mechanical hands at a hot cell at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
, on October 19, 1958

In 1945, the company Central Research Laboratories

radioactive materials from above a sealed chamber or hot cell
, with a mechanism which operated through the side wall of the chamber, allowing a researcher to stand normally while working.

The result was the Master-Slave Manipulator Mk. 8, or MSM-8, which became the iconic remote manipulator[3] seen in newsreels and movies, such as The Andromeda Strain or THX 1138.

Robert A. Heinlein claimed a much earlier origin for remote manipulators.[4] He wrote that he got the idea for "waldos" after reading a 1918 article in Popular Mechanics about "a poor fellow afflicted with myasthenia gravis ... [who] devised complicated lever arrangements to enable him to use what little strength he had." An article in Science Robotics on robots, science fiction, and nuclear accidents[5] discusses how the science fiction waldos are now a major type of real-world robots used in the nuclear industry.

See also

References

  1. ^ Technovelgy telemanipulator page
  2. ^ CRL history
  3. ^ Telemanipulator page
  4. ^ Heinlein, Robert A. (1957), "Science fiction: its nature, faults and virtues", in Davenport, Basil (ed.), The Science Fiction Novel, Chicago: Advent (published 1959)
  5. S2CID 235626467
    . Retrieved 4 April 2023.

External links