Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 2: Modern Era (1850–1949)
1948
William Grey Walter Constructs the First Electronic Autonomous Robots
Built across 1948 and 1949, this self-navigating, pathfinding robot was an important development in cybernetics (and robotics), as it could react to external factors and changing conditions like a biological system. This work prefigured the cybernetic sculpture of the ’60s and ’70s.
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
- Holland, Owen. "The First Biologically Inspired Robots." Robotica 21, no. 4 (2003): 351. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263574703004971
People
Movements
cybernetics
Filed under
- Ideas
- artificial life, autonomy, biology
- Technologies
- cybernetics, robotics
- People
- William Grey Walter
Echoes across time
- 1987 · Artificial Life Founded
- 1979 · Cybernetic Symbiosis, Berkeley: Lawrence Hall of Science
- 1992 · Breeding Forms on the Infinite Plane by William Latham
Le Random editorials
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 2—Modern Era with Kate Vass — listen with transcript on Le Random (20 Jul 2023, 58 min). Chapter 2’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify