PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University inducted the first group of four robots into its Robot Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Carnegie Science Center.
They were the Unimate, the first industrial robot; the Sojourner robot from NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission; R2D2, the "droid" from the Star Wars films; and HAL-9000, the rogue computer from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The Robot Hall of Fame was established to honor real and fictional robots, along with their creators, in recognition of the benefits robots bring to society. The goal is to create a permanent, interactive robot exhibition that will educate and entertain audiences.
The robots fall into two categories-robots from science and robots from science fiction. A panel of experts, each serving a 2-year term, will choose robots in each category to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The next selection of robots for induction into the Robot Hall of Fame is scheduled to take place in conjunction with the 25th anniversary celebration of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute on Oct. 13-16, 2004.
