"Shakey," giving its name for his less than stable gait, was developed by computer scientist Charles Rosen and his team at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) from 1966 to 1972. It was the first mobile robot to reason about its actions, like locating a specific spot in a 7-room environment, finding designated boxes, and pushing them together into groups, according to instructions, and navigating while avoiding obstacles.

A planning system called STRIPS (“Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver”) reasoned about complicated goals, like “go to room D and push block nine…