W. Grey Walter — Elmer and Elsie (the Tortoises)

1948

Artists: W. Grey Walter · Year: 1948 · Medium: Autonomous cybernetic robots — two-neuron analog circuits · Substrate: Vacuum-tube amplifiers, photocells, motors, rechargeable batteries, protective shell · Place: Bristol, UK · Institution: Burden Neurological Institute In 1948–49, the British neurophysiologist W. Grey Walter built two small wheeled robots at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol. He called them Elmer and Elsie — jointly, the Tortoises — and demonstrated them publicly over the next several years. Each Tortoise was a simple analog device: a photocell eye, two vacuum-tube amplifiers, and motors, connected in a feedback loop that produced lifelike behavior. A Tortoise would move toward moderate light, turn away from strong light, and when its batteries ran low, seek a lighted charging station to refuel before continuing its wandering. What Walter demonstrated was that extraordinary complexity of apparent behavior could emerge from minimal circuitry. The Tortoises had two neurons. They were not programmed in any modern sense. Yet they appeared to explore, hesitate, decide, dance with each other when placed together. Walter described his experiments in scientific papers, but he also presented the Tortoises to general audiences — they appeared on British television in 1950, in magazine articles, at the 1951 Festival of Britain — where they were received as small mechanical animals rather than as physiology demonstrations. The Tortoises were the first robots explicitly built to be observed as living creatures. The reception framework they established runs through every subsequent responsive-sculpture practice — Ihnatowicz's Senster, Pask's Colloquy of Mobiles, the entire lineage of cybernetic and robotic art. Walter's two-neuron demonstration remains the cleanest example of how simple systems produce emergent complexity. Walter died in 1977. Elmer and Elsie are held by the Smithsonian and the Science Museum London. Lore Walter came from an unusual background — American-British, trained in both medicine and physics — and was known for his work on EEG (electroencephalography) before the Tortoises. He called his robots machines that think in popular press appearances. He later wrote a popular book, The Living Brain (1953), that became a minor bestseller. The original Elmer and Elsie were damaged in storage; museum-held units are in most cases restored or reconstructed. Sources • Walter, W. Grey — The Living Brain (W.W. Norton, 1953) • Holland, Owen — "The First Biologically Inspired Robots" (Robotica, 2003) • Science Museum London — Tortoise collection record