Robot Hall of Fame


The Robot Hall of Fame is an American hall of fame that recognizes notable robots in various scientific fields and general society, as well as achievements in robotics technology. The organization was established in 2003 by the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as an acknowledgement of Pittsburgh's achievements in the field of robotics and with the aim of creating a broader awareness of the contributions of robotics in society. The idea for the Robot Hall of Fame was conceived by Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science dean James H. Morris, who described it as a means of "honor robots that have served an actual or potentially useful function and demonstrated real skill, along with robots that entertain and those that have achieved worldwide fame in the context of fiction." The first induction ceremony was held at the Carnegie Science Center on November 10, 2003. Thirty robots – both real and fictional – have been inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame since its inception. An exhibit named Roboworld was later established at the Carnegie Science Center in June 2009, featuring a physical embodiment of the hall of fame.
From 2003 to 2010, inductees to the Robot Hall of Fame were chosen by a selected panel of jurists. The opportunity to nominate a robot for induction into the hall of fame was also made open to the public; nominators were required to submit a one-paragraph rationale explaining their selection. The voting process was altered significantly in 2012, with nominations instead being gathered from a survey of 107 authorities on robotics and divided into four categories: Education & Consumer, Entertainment, Industrial & Service, and Research. Through an online voting system, members of the public were allowed to vote for one nominee per category; only the top three nominees in each category, based on the results of the aforementioned robotics experts survey, are included on the ballot. Officials subsequently derived the final list of inductees from both the survey and the public vote. Robot Hall of Fame director Shirley Saldamarco said of the changes:
No robots have been inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame since 2012.

Inductees

NameDescriptionCreatorCategoryRef.
2003HAL 9000Character from the film Entertainment
2003R2-D2Character from the Star Wars franchiseEntertainment
2003SojournerMars Exploration RoverNASAResearch
2003UnimateFirst industrial robot, Industrial & Service
2004ASIMOMulti-functional humanoid robotHondaResearch
2004Astro BoyCharacter from the Astro Boy franchiseEntertainment
2004C-3POCharacter from the Star Wars franchiseEntertainment
2004Robby the RobotCharacter from the film Forbidden PlanetEntertainment
2004ShakeyFirst general-purpose mobile robot to be able to reason its own actionsSRI InternationalResearch
2006AIBORobotic petSonyEducation & Consumer
2006DavidCharacter from the film A.I. Artificial IntelligenceEntertainment
2006GortCharacter from the film The Day the Earth Stood StillEntertainment
2006MariaCharacter from the film Metropolis; cited as the first robot to be depicted in cinema, Entertainment
2006SCARAFour-axis industrial robot armUniversity of YamanashiIndustrial & Service
2008Character from the Star Trek franchiseEntertainment
2008Lego MindstormsRobot toy kit seriesLegoEducation & Consumer
2008Navlab 5Autonomous robotic vehicleCarnegie Mellon School of Computer ScienceResearch
2008Raibert HopperFirst self-balancing hopping robotResearch
2010da Vinci Surgical SystemRobotic surgical systemIntuitive SurgicalIndustrial & Service
2010DeweyCharacters from the film Silent Running,, Entertainment
2010HueyCharacters from the film Silent Running,, Entertainment
2010LouieCharacters from the film Silent Running,, Entertainment
2010OpportunityMars exploration roverNASAResearch
2010RoombaAutonomous robotic vacuum cleaneriRobotEducation & Consumer
2010SpiritMars exploration roverNASAResearch
2010Terminator T-800Character from the Terminator franchise, Entertainment
2012BigDogQuadrupedal military robotBoston Dynamics, Foster-Miller, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Harvard University Concord Field StationResearch
2012NaoAutonomous humanoid robotAldebaran RoboticsEducation & Consumer
2012PackBotMilitary robotiRobotIndustrial & Service
2012WALL-ECharacter from the film WALL-EEntertainment