Mark Tilden has set himself the aim of constructing
robots which are able to exist autonomously in the real world.
His research mainly focuses on the fields of construction,
design and cooperative behaviour studies.
In "Tilden's Laws of Robotics" he summed up the guidelines
for the construction of these autonomous robotic devices.
With his work he aims at providing basic instructions
according to which autonomous mechanisms can be
constructed for various different ranges of application.

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Mark W. Tilden

THE EVOLUTION OF FUNCTIONAL ROBO-ECOLOGIES

Hollywood science fiction has always falsely portrayed the idea that robots just "happen" when motors, neon lights, silicon chips, and a little programming (usually shown as BASIC program listings) combine. Put in bucket, shake well, out pops R2D2. This has, alas, scared away more people from robotics than the "Terminator" because it just doesn't work, or when it does work, the damn thing doesn't even compare to a store-bought toy. Even worse is when enthusiasts are told that "The Real Money" is not in the robot mechanisms of their dreams but in industrial robotics, a field more concerned with statistics than imagination. Consequently, the robotic ideal still exists only on the silver screen and in the fertile imagination of its viewers.

Although current technology has made great strides in building artificial reasoning machines, there has yet to be any definitive way of interfacing such "brains" with robot bodies capable of surviving real-world complexity. Almost every attempt to make truly autonomous robots has resulted in failure. Exceptions have usually involved fantastic sums of money, thousands of man hours, usually both.