Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

There seems to be a common tradition that no matter what field of work you are in somebody will want to do something that will give credit to the best of the best in that line of work. A common way to do this is with a Hall of Fame.

You're probably all familiar with Hall of Fames. Hall of Fames are most commonly used when it comes to sports or music. There is a baseball Hall of Fame, football Hall Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and others. But there are some other Hall of Fames out there that probably aren't quite as well known.

One of the more interesting Hall of Fames you've probably never heard of is the Robot Hall of Fame.

The Robot Hall of Fame has two functions:

1. Honor achievements in robotics technology.
2. Honor robots from science fiction that create inspiration in the field of robotics.

The Robot Hall of Fame was created by the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Most of the time when a Hall of Fame is established that field of work has been going on for many years so the first class of inductees is very special. The first class inducted is the absolute cream of the crop because they are chosen over everything else in that field.

The first class of inductees in the Robot Hall of Fame are no different. The inaugural class was inducted in 2003 at the Carnegie Science Center.

The real robots that were inducted in the first class were the Sojourner, a rover that explored Mars in 1997, and Unimate, the first industrial robot ever created.

On the science fiction side of the Robot Hall of Fame the inaugural inductees were HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and R2-D2 from Star Wars.

In 2004 R2-D2 was joined by his buddy C-3PO. Astro Boy and Robby the Robot were the other science fiction robots inducted in 2004. They were joined by ASIMO, a robot created by Honda, and Shake the Robot, the first mobile robot.

The Robot Hall of Fame inducted AIBO, Sony's cyber-dog, and Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm in 2006. While the science fiction robots inducted were Maria from Metropolis, Gort from the Day the Earth Stood Still and David, the android boy from A. I.

The most recent class of the Robot Hall of Fame had only one science fiction inductee, Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The real robot most recently inducted were Lego Mindstorms NXT, Navlab, and Marc Raibert's Hopper.