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Electric Dog - 1912

An electric dog, the ancestor of all phototropic self-directing robots, was designed in 1912 and constructed in the USA by researchers John Hammond, Jr. and Benjamin Miessner who worked in the field of 'Radiodynamics', or the wireless control of mobile torpedoes, in particular the so-called “teleautomata” or “self-acting automata. Ethical Issues in Robotics, Bionics, and AI; Guglielmo Tamburrini °Dept. of Physical Sciences, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy Napoli, 20 maggio 2005

[Hammond’s dirigible torpedo] is fitted with apparatus similar to that of the electric dog, so that if the enemy turns their search light on it, it will immediately be guided toward that enemy automatically. B. F. Miessner, Radiodynamics, 1916

 

Thank you David Mitchell for telling me about the Electric Dog