The summer I turned ten, I went to a week long computer camp at the high school. The computers were Apple IIe and the language was LOGOS. It was super fun. There was something special at the end of camp. It was a robot. A REAL robot!!
When I was a kid, robots in my mind were Rosey from the Jetsons (I’d love a robot to clean my house), and Robot Model B-9 from Lost in Space which was less appealing. Who wants a loud robot flailing its arms and yelling about danger? Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back introduced much cooler robotic possibilities. If you squinted and screwed up your face real hard, TOPO might slightly remind you of R2 D2. Maybe …
TOPO was cute. It reminded people of a snowman. It was a beige boxy thing on wheels with triangulated panels. It had two wheels mounted at angles to keep it upright and hand shelves that folded out. In 1983, Androbot built 650 of them. It retailed for $495 and was a flop. TOPO didn’t do much and one retailer said it had ‘no value‘. Another retailer sold only one then gave the rest of his stock away to school.
I don’t know how the school got a robot. Maybe my school got one for free. Thinking back, I assumed it belonged to the school. It could have belonged to the teacher or maybe some local enthusiasts.
You could program TOPO just like the LOGOS turtle. We most likely used Apple BASIC to program it. TOPO had a wireless infrared communication link. The earlier model was radio controlled.
TOPO didn’t bring in an age of robot overlords. In fact, it might not have been an actual robot. It was more like an automaton.
Based on the below quote from Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, TOPO is not a robot,
TOPO was a machine. It was not capable of sensing its environment. It could fall down stairs or bump into lockers that lined the hallways. Instructions were fed into TOPO’s hollow head. It could not carry out computations to make decisions. The real world actions were limited to geometric patterns. It had little hand shelves that could be lowered. They were big enough for a can of pop or beer. I don’t imagine it was a worthwhile endeavor to program it to move from one location to another to bring a person a Coke. The path would have to be flat without obstacles. The beverage would have to be placed in TOPO’s hand.
A widely accepted definition of robot is that of the Robot Institute of America: “A robot is a reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.”
TOPO is reprogrammable. It’s only a multifunctional manipulator if moving around on its funny tilted wheels and carrying a beverage counts which it doesn’t. TOPO cannot manipulate its environment nor does it have environmental awareness. No artificial thoughts run in its plastic head.
No sensor, no feedback loops, no ability to make decisions – the robot of my childhood was not a robot at all. My brother’s radio controlled car was a more technically sophisticated machine. TOPO was an automata.
Automata has been written about since 4th century BC by Mathematician Archytas of Tarentum. Driven by hydraulics or steam, they were used for religious ceremonies then entertainment. Aristotle speculated in his Politics (ca. 322 BC, book 1, part 4) that automata could someday bring about human equality by making possible the abolition of slavery.
That didn’t happen in the ancient world. Automata became objects of entertainment for the rich for centuries. Singing birds, bell striking mechanical mannequins, humanoid automata serving water, tea or drinks all before Gutenberg’s movable type printing press.
The industrial revolution changed everything and eventually automata got off their lazy mechanical butts. Industrial robots started working in US factories in 1930s. Motions could be controlled through cam and switch programming.
Now robots putter around on Mars sending photos home. A step far beyond TOPO bringing someone a can of pop.
In my electronic wandering, I came across someone selling a “special edition, Gold Plate Nolan Bushnell signed, serial # 200 TOPO II Robot with IR Controller base, Apple II interface card, owners manual and software” for $2500 back in 2013. I wondered if he sold it and if so for how much.“
The idea of TOPO was much greater than the machine itself. It was magical, straight from a sci-fi movie. My love of tech gadgets might have been inspired by TOPO. I didn’t keep up with programming after camp. The next programming class I took was Visual Basic at a community college right before I started a new job. I learned COBOL and mainframe on the job.
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