okay um why don't we just start by
having you tell us
where you were born and where you grew
up and went to school well that sounds
very boring
yeah born in the unfortunate city of
belgrade
went to school there
that was disrupted by world war ii
[Music]
the city burned including in a bomb that
fell in our house
and then there was a glorious time of
four years without school
that for some kids was disastrous for
some kids was fun
it was a war time after that
there was scramble to have three or four
shifts in the school building many
buildings were missing
destroyed then things regularized and i
think belgrade provided excellent
education in fact
and the university i remember it as the
top
quality while the textbooks were missing
and so on you would
find enough of you know english language
books were
being received by andre in other aids
organizations
then we were reading from russian books
and so on so i think the education was
very good the labs were maybe somewhat
obsolete
but fundamental education was quite good
mathematics was particularly good
what did you study there electrical
engineering
yeah i was this was at the time
the hardest to get into and some kids
like
when it's hard you know there was this
qualifying exam
i don't know how many hundreds apply and
as i recall only 100 yet
in they give you tough
questions to write about and so on
then another point of selection was
after two years
you have to pass with whatever score
to continue the study or else you can
be eliminated and there were some
remarkable professors that influenced us
i mentioned to you mitrovic this was the
beginning of
automatic control in most countries and
this was certainly in belgrade the first
time that so-called server systems
course was
presented and you know servo system
meant
for example in the artillery arrangement
you may call it robotics if you wish but
basically
the anti-aircraft artillery has to
follow
an airplane so this was a development of
world war ii
wiener norbert wiener participated and
mostly mit labs were developing things
so the radar became available the
raiders antenna would
follow the plane there would be image an
image of the plane and the
servo system would have to adjust the
radar in three dimension
at least two dimensions and then
the radar was to be followed by the
alignment of the anti-aircraft artillery
so that was one of the earliest
products of world war ii that was
fully automated so i
studied that and then i went to the
nuclear
science institute near belgrade
many of us were recruited for that kind
of work
the first project was on this
experimental nuclear reactor the bigger
one the safe one
just to follow the to track the level of
the heavy water inside the reactor also
to adjust
the rods
and then we had lots of industrial
projects
so that control systems group or
automation group or
process control group and there was
quite a bit of cooperation belgrade
zagreb's arrival
mostly this triangle so
pretty much people of the same
generation
some of us were in the same training not
only in the same train but in the same
sleeping car
as we went to the congress in moscow in
1960 all by train you know 25 days or so
plenty of time to discuss so we had guys
from zagreb sarajevo
belgrade some other cities so we almost
created a committee
so that when we return back to
yugoslavia from the congress will start
some joint work and indeed we did
so that was the beginning if you wish
for me certainly but for the field it
wasn't much before the field
in a sense the modern version of that
field started
in world war ii but if you want to dig
history of course the old greeks or all
mesopotamians had
they were controlling dams they were
contouring controlling
irrigation systems and so on so that
that concept of regulation control is
very old
was there anything called uh robotics or
what you would call robotics
this was the first major project
was the there were many amputees
you know former partisans resistance
fighters and
many amputees also from bombings
just the war victims so there was a big
need
especially for artificial arms and legs
and the artificial arms
were a big challenge not only in
yugoslavia but people were trying in
germany other places to develop this
with the
growth of electronics i have to tell you
that you know transistors just appeared
and some miniaturization was possible
several motors became sufficiently small
for the war
wartime applications and the idea that
maybe artificial arms could be created
motivated many people so belgrade had
this project
later called belgrade arm organized by
professor ikotomovic
the group of us started i didn't
continue very for very long others
continued
this developed into bigger robotics
project big
robotics operation there was a section
the pupil institute
for a while supervised by tomovich and
then taking over
continued by vocabulary but my
information about that period is already
too vague i
i was in this country i wasn't there so
i know only these three
four years and they were sort of an
enthusiastic start
maybe not always realistic you know
fantasy and dreams very often
propel you especially if you are in the
less than
super developed country the development
also
you know when the country is developed
it sobers you it shows also what is
impossible
when you are not so developed and when
you are young
you have all sorts of heroic ideas that
transfer into technology
some of them sometimes succeed so they
were looking at a cable control system
for the hand
there were several designs the first one
was
with the single motor and some sort of a
switch
mechanical coupling that would
pull the cables that was the most
primitive original thing
then the idea was that maybe there would
be ways of
doing it with some
rotating axles and pulling the fingers
individually
the hope was that the motors will be so
miniaturized then there were even
as i recall as ideas of the pneumatic
and i don't know it was not pursued in
belgrade but elsewhere
to have pneumatic pipes as little
pistons
to pull the fingers up and down
so mechanics of it were extremely
difficult especially if you wanted to
have
fully anthropomorphic human hand
if you were satisfied with three fingers
only or with a claw or something then it
was easier
it happened that years after i believe a
french product succeeded
i remember maybe in the 70s
staying in a hotel and you know bed and
breakfast place and i saw a
young man youngish man taking the
coffee cup and drinking and then i
realized and i realized it was pretty
much that same
idea that worked plus apparently in his
case
he didn't have to use motion apparently
he was able to control it by
by his own nerves that means that
already then
as i mentioned the first uh ifa congress
if you take a look at the
proceedings of that first ifa congress
where the belgrade hand or just a
skeleton controlled by cables wires
was described there was also
a presentation and i remember the name
of the russian author was kobrinski
kobrinski i attended
the demonstration the demonstration was
with a patient
who was trained enough to concentrate
so that he would create strong enough
electric signal
in the ending of his amputated arm
so that he could do two basic operations
close and open
and that was demonstrated already then
the electronics
for the time was very clumsy obviously
bigger paratus
not portable and so on but you know it
worked
so that was that line
was a fascination that the robotics
should serve the
industrial needs of course that was well
known
first was positioning as you would say
pick and place
operations that i connected with early
isotope
manipulators that were not automated
initially that
included a system of mechanical
transmissions
so that you could control an artificial
hand by
basically squeezing an opening with your
own hand
so that that existed in industry for all
sorts of hazardous materials for
handling of the hazardous materials then
and that helped the mechanics of these
type of hands
but you know industrial robotics as i
worked in industrial control you know
they would appear they would go to first
move some heavy objects
then as we know painting was one of the
early applications that succeeded
and i
pretty much
only occasionally then
would follow what happened in robotics
you know walking now at our conferences
into some robotic session
sessions or talking to a colleague who
was working on it
by the way i think my young colleague
mark spawned and came joined illinois
and he wrote one of the first textbooks
i don't know if you know spawned with
the saga textbook
he's now dean at dallas
the university of texas at dallas so he
being the being an early textbook writer
in that area
can tell you more about it
there was a lot also of as i recall he
was
there is even a name for it help me now
the
to transfer the feeling of the touch
uh i forgot this uh there is a detector
yeah tactile but there is yeah
yes haptics yeah there were haptics
development of haptics started and
he had quite a bit to do with it
he got me interested in
just a mathematical subject of
if you design a robotic control say
robot arm control assuming that
the material is completely rigid
how can you do a correction
for actual flexibility so that fitted
some of the theories
we were developing separate from this
issue namely the inclusion of additional
tolerances and compliances
that while assuming that something rigid
and you design it as rigid then you can
redesign it without repeating everything
by just adding a corrective term
for uh flexibility so that was well
received
yeah there was a significant oh i now
remember there was a significant robotic
center at
georgia tech atlanta georgia this was a
nationally financed
pretty big operation i the names now
escape me
but one was our former student from
illinois
who i don't think worked in robotics
when he went to
atlanta but david taylor so he may
give you he's a wonderful researcher
he may give you some information about
that center there
i'm not sure what it's called now i
think it's called manufacturing or
something rather it started as robotics
i believe but it became manufacturing
so that's another aspect many of these
robotics
centers may be understanding that
robotics is somewhat
undefined and if defined and maybe
unnecessarily narrow
they brought it into the concept of
manufacturing because
pick and place was one thing right but
more complex automation
required understanding the whole factory
floor
passage of the material all sorts of
things of this kind
so the complex automation absorbs
subsumed
robotic elements as just individual
actuators if you wish you know you have
this
body of a car to be painted you see this
thing the car comes it's slightly
rotated this and that way the painting
goes and the
painting goes through the drying machine
and to something else the new body comes
from to be painted and so on so
clearly there is robotics but there is
many there are many other things along
so now the
the robotics proper as i
recall in belgrade was the major
activity was
cobrato which is and then i remember
visiting there he was talking about
exoskeletons obviously he was similarly
connected
with rehabilitation organizations
whereby and this was a good application
to to use robotics
not to provide the whole motion but to
assist
in the the disabled person's motion or
in the recovering
person's motions or rehabilitation
centers
used it and then when i came here
through the work of this former graduate
here and my colleague professor watner i
i learned about their surgery machines
so much so that i was very happy to see
how they operated
and even took my wife she had her knee
operated by one of those
yeah they're quite widely used these you
know that
we must know about these orthoscopic and
very fine
surgeries that can be done now
the computer motion local company was
very
much in the forefront of these and they
patented many things and i think were
financially successful as we said they
were solved to integrate
belgrade who funded these kinds of
initiatives well the
european institute was state funded
and also industry we were getting some
grants from industry
you would have to show the interest of
industry in order to
also get some state funding there were
commissions
i forgot some tech or something as hours
for
technical development and so on then you
would try some international
aid but as i say domovich was
particularly successful
with the u.s veteran administration so
for a while belgrade hand
was financed by u.s veteran
administration i noticed maybe five
six years ago that actually us veterans
administration
is continuing to finance more advanced
models and there was this
report i don't know if you've seen i
think even on the
television program of one of these
amputees that is so successful
a military person that is so successful
with
with this more advanced with very
advanced versions of
oh it's still the training and
improvements are needed but
i remember seeing this and reading so
that
that line i don't think has ever been
abandoned and every new development was
cultivated through that
then as i said the rest is probably
described in the belgrade publications
which i haven't followed
from the group of okobratovic
uh so what years were you a student
there what years was i students
i was at the university from 52
till
57 probably 50. what happened is
i went to france first
during my studies then again to germany
so
i sort of delayed getting my diploma
because it was easier to travel
before you get your diplomas the moment
you get your diploma you have to go to
the military service right
so most of us we this was really early
time
the yugoslavs got the opportunity to
travel students and
positions were open for us in industry
so i was in france it was a good
automated power station where i worked
and in germany i worked
in a factory and you know they were
cooperative and nice and showing us some
advanced projects and so on these
post organizations so it was good
i still have friendly relations with
stuttgart some young people
when i told them when i worked in
stuttgart they realized although
they are around 50 they realize they
weren't born quite
but yes i will give you i just sent you
i emailed you this little
autobiographical sketch which i wrote
for ieee
what happened they sent a guy to
interview me
and it was a long interview the
transcription of it
you know he wanted especially he wanted
me to tell more about the soviet science
at the time and so on but the
transcription of it
even i even though i was remembering
what i was talking i couldn't
reconstruct even my own thoughts
so i begged them to to remove it and
then i said i will write it for you on
my own
so rather than you know having an
interviewer because that particular
person
might have been too tired to or i don't
know
anyhow maybe my english was too bad so
but they're in this in this i i refer to
you know the state of the 60s
you have to understand the post put
nikira the sputnik shook
the west they just couldn't believe it
you know i was in germany and you know
the
dog was sent to space remember there was
a little dog in the
satellite and then of course when the
man went to space etc
so then the idea was that russian
mathematics
and especially russian applied
mathematics
and control theory we're
responsible for these successes
cold war so i am a victim of world war
ii somewhat and beneficiary of the cold
war because the moment you know
i got my even before i got my russian
degree
some american colleagues met me and said
as soon as you finish
we will arrange for you to come to the
united states
so i was really repackaged
slightly when i came back to belgrade
and literally a couple of months later
three or four months later i
i went to the u.s and that was it
so where did you study in russia uh
their
academy of sciences institute called
institut well it's
well known in our field institute for
automation and telemechanics
at that time it was iat
then when they became too big and got a
new big building prospered
beyond their dreams they became
institute of control
sciences institute problem
or instead of control problems rather
but just about everybody who was known
in the field was
either a member of that institute or was
somehow associated very often
they were just the front sometimes for
some
plan not klundustein but classified
organizations so
if you were to if you're declassified
and you were to present some results
then you present them
as the member of that institute even
though you might be a member of
something else
so this was and this was one of the
first that started a professional
journal
in that area and i now attended
we celebrated 80th anniversary of my
colleague david mayne in london so he
remembers how
they in london were grabbing every bit
of the translation of
or finding people who would translate
this from the russian magazines this is
how
far advanced at that moment or at least
was believed to be so far advanced you
know there were
mathematical breakthroughs there that
were of immediate help
to engineers and that was appreciated
how did you decide to go to russia
well that is a touchy subject
that is a touchy subject i
applied for fulbright fellowship
and the fulbright commission at least at
the time i don't know now was
composed 50 of the local members 50
percent of the us members right
and
there were situations in yugoslavia
happening people were getting
unhappy with
what was then called the
bureaucratization
and misbehavior of the leaders
mostly on the level of misusing the
public property
you know government cars were present at
various
in various resort areas various
restaurants and so on it was
pretty obvious they were not there for
official
purpose or so on many many such things
so there were basically
criticisms and so on and the tip
is a typical thing for this was to
immediately start
diffusing the pressure so the
leaders for example belgrade leaders
would go to various organizations
especially where the younger
intellectuals were working
and say okay comrades tell us what's
wrong let's discuss and so on
we were also tired of this kind of sort
of a
farce so this
gentleman well cameron came and he was
saying okay
tell us you know there was no way
that anybody could misuse any government
property in our institute we had known
basically
but i was sitting next to the window
which was overlooking at the
parking lot so i said cameron
i don't know i see one of these cars is
an expensive mercedes
this is the only candidate that could be
misused is this by any chance your car
you know i was making what i thought was
a good joke but it exploded
they attacked me they said i was
agitating against tito or something or
other
and it just happened that the professor
from the university liked me a lot
and he was a member of the fulbright
commission
so i get a call from said idiot what
have you done
and i said well nothing serious he says
what do you mean it's not serious we
were already told to remove you from the
list of candidates for fulbright
and to send the letter that you haven't
satisfied on the english test
which probably was also true but you
know i would have probably
received full write other i don't know
anyhow
and then moreover he said you know what
the things are so serious from what i
hear you better leave the country for a
while invent some
some business trip or something or other
i said
better yet i am also on a commission for
some soviet fellowships
and then he said we have ten of those
nobody wants them only two ballerinas
and one violin player
no engineer wants them but interestingly
you know i was reading some of this
russian literature
and i very much wanted you know of
course i preferred fulbright but i very
much wanted to
to see professor feldbaum so i thought
okay i will go there i will get one year
fellowship but i will go there stay a
month or two
until the dust settles and then come
back but it turned out
it was a very good opportunity that they
gave me
again they would not put me in this in
that instant it was close to foreigners
that's another interesting story
all the time
but when i somehow tried to get in touch
with phil baum
the secretary would always say he's out
of town and then i read
popular science page in the
moscow newspaper once a week it comes in
the
palace of popular science professor
ferdinand is giving a popular lecture
so i rushed there introduced myself to
him after the lecture
and he says come to this you say how can
i come it's close i will
take you in so he waited for me at the
door
amazing you know i'm a kid there and
he's a famous world famous guy
one day next day he waits for me and
passes and so
i finally get embarrassed that this guy
would have to come down from the third
floor to take me
up so i tell him oh i am unable to come
i have something else to do next
next day but then i come the next day
and i just walk in and the guard salute
they saw me with an important person
three times in a row
and the four and then i started coming
every day normally passing through
not showing anything just passing
through like everybody else
i made sure i bought some russian shoes
and russian pants you know certain
and i had to change my glasses because
western glasses were recognizable as
opposed to etcetera but anyhow
so to make the long story short the
secretary of the institute somebody
introduced me to her i already had
you know chocolates and other things
ready for the purpose it was well
known so finally she came once and said
give me your pass so i can extend it
and i said masha what pass
and she really got white she says what
do you mean you don't have a pass
i said no i didn't even of course i knew
i didn't even know that there was
a need for a pass and four women
she rushed to did something she said
when was it the first time you walked in
she gave me an old pass
and she gave me the new pass
and i told this story to sveters
but i told him you know make sure you
get guaranteed don't play the tricks now
the second time the trick will not work
so by then we organized things so they
were allowed to go
and then he went to work with emiliano
that was interesting yeah these were the
times you know funny times that
you had too many as much as they were
claiming kgb kgbs this and that
basically they were stupid you you could
play
tricks i was able to get rid of my tail
as a joke you know you read agatha
christie
and there it is you know he is behind
you breathing
back there and you just wait in the
subway
wait when the door starts closing
and just about halfway the door you jump
out right
yeah these things were common for us
good job for them so you were there for
two years
no one year only one year and then did
you go to the states
yeah back to yugoslavia for a few months
only
but from there i was on an organizing
committee although i was in russia i was
an
organizing committee of a dubrovnik
symposium
and then you know i became well
connected with the
top of the russians of that institute
which was also top of the russian
establishment in this
area of science for example alexander
lotto
was the president of ifak he was a
remarkable
man he was fluent in english he had the
international passport he was one of the
soviets that could travel anywhere
so much so that you know we became
friendly enough that i asked him
recommend some of the theater shows here
in moscow to me
he said oh no there are no theaters in
moscow there are only
theater museums if you want to see some
new place
you better go to broadway wait until you
get to broadway
yeah no soviet dare say this unless you
as well
yeah there were also these remarkable
people so
seven of them came to dubrovnik
as a package so they called themselves
the movie was very famous then like
magnificent seven remember that movie
yeah
so they called themselves the
magnificent salmon so
and we magnificent temple know the
russians
this was quite a representative group
mark heiserman
jacob chipkin slava emiliano
maddy mudkin was the youngest toyah
butkowski
mayor of
uh russell or maybe did i get to seven
yeah they were they were
quite advanced they stayed in la pad
in a hotel there all them and
interestingly
apparently it was a hotel where they
would put the soviets
at the same time there was a delegation
or a group
of the
of the russian writers
including their leading
woman poet bellach madulina
i remember it was a rainy afternoon
nobody was swimming in
lapa beach and i went swimming and whoop
a face appears in from the water
like one of those you know she was a bit
of a comic
beauty forcibly you know yellow
porcelain or
pink porcelain and so on so we became
friends and you know her husband was
also a major writer in a so we then
organized that
i was taking the tour of russians by bus
and the soviet writers union by bus our
two buses were
returning together from dubrovnik to
mostar
our bridge to sarajevo and so on
i have another monster beach story but
that's separate that we can do off
because
this says fantastic things about most
our people you know
i will when the monster an elderly man
was sitting
you know with the fest yeah and as i was
walking with bella
she was through beauty you know striking
beauty
and showing her this and that he stands
up
comes and kisses her from one side from
the other side
and yuri was behind her husband he just
got panicky what's going on
the old man wasn't disturbed at all you
know the husband runs
and he says are in our language
are you the husband of this
undescribable beauty
and he congratulates you this
so then he of course wrote a story about
it
during the giving in his collection of
stories
because you know and that that describes
most star in my
in my terminology maximally this was
fantastic
so what were some other uh interactions
between eastern and western
scientists yeah there was quite a bit
the i that was the time when i was even
encouraged to invite
soviet colleagues so we brought you know
emiliano was invited to urbana
woodkin state for a year as my guest in
urbana
then iserman we got emiliano and eisman
wants to get her to
i have these pictures it's funny i'm
playing with my kids and so on
and for example puntra in the group they
came to mit
they came to um oh yeah about these
connections you want to contact
professor balakrishnan
at ucla here's a movie of pontragin
giving a lecture in
i guess 1970 69 72 i forgot when
at ucla he would be more than happy to
share this video
professor balakrishna um
speaking of which have you heard of
boris kogan
yeah this was a one of the seven uh
boris kogan
who is now probably 95
i think he still has an office at ucla
he came to ucla in his late 70s a
remarkable car
he was one of the director lab directors
in that institute
so he's a walking history
last time i talked to him two years ago
he was perfectly lucid so
i haven't been in touch lately but it's
not hard to find him
everybody at ucla he's kind of a legend
everybody will know
by the way he was in contact with becky
maybe becky would
know closer contact there was another
important name that i should mention who
is not
among us walter karplus k a
r p l u s so he did a lot for
interactions so he interacted
with yugoslavia was frequent visitor and
then
with soviet counterparts with boris for
example he even arranged for boris to
come i
wasn't quite in the loop where is kogan
and then you know there were official
contacts as well
apollo soyuz was a major one
we had a joint meeting this was only my
second visit then to
well the first visit after i left there
were in all sorts of
unpleasant things with visiting russia
especially if you were there before and
then settled in the
u.s that was not not very convenient
but anyway in the either 73 or 74 there
was the apollo soyuz
recapitulation reporting meeting
that was held in a sports training
center
near yerevan in armenia this is where
their
olympic team was practicing because that
was the same elevation i believe as
mexico city this was just before the
mexico city olympics and we were
attached to that group apollo soyuz
and there was just too much of
intelligence supervision i mean the
spies all
over so much so that
when i came to my hotel room
ravishing blonde was sitting on my bed
and saying can i do something
to help you you know i immediately woke
up i
walked out went to the room of my
colleague who was the director of
institute in germany jurgen ackerman i
said
very good friend i said you're going to
come to my room and both of us come to
the room and i said look this lady
wanted to help me
but what do i do now i don't need any
help so she escapes of course
but you know i saw her around she was
part of the official group but you know
it was clear so they wanted to trap you
into some
inconveniences and and you know it was
standard and
take a picture too and then blackmail
you into cooperating
by the way whenever you went to a trip a
cia
person or fbi person would come and tell
you that such things might happen
so to be very careful and avoid such
traps
because of course there would be cameras
and so on that would embarrass you
yeah but this this was a this was a good
meeting you know apollo so use was a
good progress and
you know things contacts went up and
down depending on
the the major change was of course with
khrushchev when he came to power
how did you wind up with the university
of illinois and what kind of work
was going on there and control yeah this
this was uh
um we'll do as i described in this
little
autobiographic document this was all due
to mike when walking work so you will
see the details there
he organized a c not to
for me to come to illinois but he
organized a series of lectures for me so
i gave
lectures at about 20 30 institutions
universities but also research
institutions in this country
which took about three or four months
some places it would take two weeks like
a short course
which was in in urban illinois and maybe
at berkeley a couple of other places
like this
at that occasion i made contacts with
all sorts of american colleagues
you know and i did get several offers
then
but mack he really acted as my mentor so
he was a very significant person
wonderful
so he said why don't you stay in
illinois
i felt but the atmosphere was so
friendly i don't know if you share my
impressions people were really fantastic
so i felt totally at home there
i worked with here here is the illinois
trio
these are the guys
bill perkins joe cruz and myself
so which department did you have
electrical engineering but mostly
mostly coordinated science lab
this itself was a product of cold war it
was first called control systems lab
and was doing things for the korean war
during the korean war and then evolved
into a multi-disciplinary lab it's still
there very successful multidisciplinary
organization
and it was very enjoyable you know you
were with colleagues
50 there 50 in the department
electrical engineering department so
these were wonderful 25 years
and if you know if it weren't for anna
my wife who then
belatedly you know went back reagan
abolished her organization educational
and helping the
inner city kids and so on i mean abolish
the grants for this
you know like head start and these
things lost under
a very generous president so
she went back to get her phd and then of
course in romana you don't get the job
if you have a phd from that place
so then she got an appointment here said
okay
time to change every 25 years i made
this change few more times
so we talked a bit earlier you you had
encounters with uh heinz forrester and
ross ashby
yes yes yes these were these are
fascinating people when i first came to
urbana
and you know heinz was
easy to talk to he was gregarious and
you would see him everywhere you just
ask one question you get
you know a whole little story behind it
and you know he would take you to
whatever lab you know it wasn't always
clear what was in it but
you know heights would always give very
imaginative explanations
and it was very different with ross
fortunately
i had through friends i had a very
direct connection so we would have
almost weekly dinners at the french
home because she cultivated
this connection and maybe
he was not really in any technical field
but
so i got to know and basically to listen
to him i
couldn't possibly follow any of those
suggestions i had
too busy a career to basically maintain
my own
position and to develop the field in a
different direction but
you know if i were in some area closer
to where his ideas could be implemented
this would have been fascinating
but soon after he left you know i
met him whether 65 66 and maybe 67
i don't know whether he left in 67 or
68.
about yugoslavia i want to say another
thing you know you know that the father
of cybernetics is norbert winner right
well he was also one of the early
visitors because
there was a conference on cybernetics in
apathy i think as early as 1960 or so
so wiener came and then had a tour of
yugoslavia i
was assigned to for a couple of days to
take him around belgrade
i still have some pictures and some
journalists wanted to have an
interview like this so i arranged for
this and we were sitting somewhere in
color magdalena somewhere and they
interviewed
wiener yeah that was
the only thing that bothered me was he's
holding his cigar
i could smell that his fingers were
burning and it didn't bother him at all
they were burnt for years probably
you know you sit with somebody you smell
the flesh burning it's not quite
so would you say there was a strong
influence of cybernetics on early
robotics oh yes oh i think that you know
this whole business if you read um i
will have to leave now if you read
um wiener you will see
you know that he already was enchanted
by
some uh pathological oscillations of
human
hand and so on so that was
definitely uh very influential
he the whole cybernetics
at that time was more of a you know he
coined the term that was more like a
dreamland
and you know his
his book is called cybernetics human use
of human being
right so there is an interesting thing
to read about john f neumann on one hand
and
wiener and the other one was hawkish
militarized
person and mineral that he worked for
military projects during the war
he on the other hand was human use of
human being and i was a very different
person different nature i will tell you
one
vignette which was fascinating this
conversation goes at the
lunch table and i thought we were
talking about this
armed section from his book and all of a
sudden i realized he is talking about
some irregular verbs in
in the macedonia language
i was shaken and i said finally
it was clarified his father was some
world linguist and as a kid he was
losing track obviously
i said because of old age and when i
talked to people with two courses from
he said no no that was all basically
but anyways he knew irregular macedonian
verbs
and so on which somehow jumped into a
conversation about symbolism
analytics and was there anything like
robotics going on at
illinois while you were there as i say
robert chen professor chen hit the
robotics lab
and this is where simon hint was bought
so one of my students worked on simon
there were other things there not just
the simon hand but
they were more on the software side
chen was more of a software person
so um and then yeah then i should say
later on mark spawn came so that that
period was then characterized by
the work of mark spong who wrote the
book about the
textbook for it and
yeah he also made small robots for
for laboratory experiments yeah one was
called pendu boat one was called acrobot
little acrobats or whatever something or
other so he didn't go into
sophisticated things but sort of
elementary operations