In 1948 the British neurologist W. Grey Walter began work on a pair of robotic "tortoises"-three-wheeled creatures named Elmer and Elsie that crawled around on the floor seeking light, avoiding obstacles and even engaging in a kind of mating dance. Elmer and Elsie were a big hit at public demonstrations and in a BBC newsreel; Walter also wrote a book about them, as well as two Scientific American articles. And the tortoises had a lasting influence; for example, they inspired the "turtle geometry" that animated computer graphics 30 years later.
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