Hello Hello People How Are You?

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This is part 2 of this mini series and took quite some time to be made. In case you haven't seen part 1 you can easily click here and check it out. Briefly i want to inform you that part one introduced some robots that used in the Ancient world. Some of the most advanced civilizations of that era was Ancient Greece and Ancient China. 

As Humanity wanted something to make their lives easier as well as to ''play god'', robots were created and during that era the first robot scientists and inventors came out. Those people managed to create robots that looked liked animals and with the experience they did the first steps on making some humanoid robots.

Enough with the Ancient era, you can check my earlier post for that. Now it's time to see how with that knowledge people like Leonardo Da Vinci as well as Jacques de Vaucanson managed to leave their mark in History of Robots and more specifically in humanoid robots. 

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

 Portrait of Leonardo -Source: commons.wikipedia.org- Author: Francesco Melzi-Licence: Public Domain 

I think we all know who Leonardo Da Vinci was and i have no doubts that everybody knows a little bit about his work. Mona Lisa along with The Last Supper are the most known example of his work. They are everywhere from books to movies and in general many controversial theories surround these paintings.

I don't wanna stay for too long to who Leonardo Da Vinci was cause i wanna talk about his robotic contribution so just note that he was a polymath meaning that had many different interests like painting, sculpting, science,music, mathematics, inventions, anatomy, geology cartography etc etc and is considered as a Universal Genius

Leonardo Da Vinci's Mechanical Knight 

Around 1957 an Italian historian that is considered an expert related to Leonardo Da Vinci matters, named Carlo Pedretti discovered some sketches Leonardo made regarding a Mechanical Knight that probably used for defense purposes. The Mechanical knight looked like a medieval knight wearing his full armor and a helmet and even carrying a sword.  Inside the knight it was a series of mechanisms that made the robot moving its hand and arms as well as stand on its feet.

Because it is not known if a prototype was made back then some scientists that read a lot about Leonardo's work made the mechanical knight based on his sketches and knowledge in 2002 and 2007. Their names are Mark Rosheim and Mario Taddei and they both said their prototypes managed to move perfectly. 

Model Of  A Robot Based On Drawing By Leonardo da Vinci Source: commons.wikipedia.org- Author:  Erik Möller-Licence: Public Domain

The reason the scientists believe that the Humanoid Knight may just stayed in theory during Leonardo's time was because of the wars. As at that time there was a war out, all of the resources were undoubtedly given for that purpose. They didn't have the time to bother with experiments and especially experiments that needed money and a lot of technological development.

 A modern reconstruction of the robot of Leonardo da Vinci in the Leonardo3 laboratories Source: commons.wikipedia.org- Author: Mario Taddei  Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

I have found a really cool museum and research center that is dedicated to show Leonardo Da Vinci's work and is located in Milan Italy. Due to copyrights i can't share any pictures but i can share a link so in order to check all the machines he invented 

CLICK HERE FOR THE MUSEUM 

Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782)

 Portrait of Jacques de Vaucanson  Source: commons.wikipedia.org- Author: Joseph Boze  Licence: Public Domain

 You probably have no idea who that person is so let me enlighten you a bit. Jacques de Vaucanson had 10 brothers and sisters and he was the son of a glove maker. In other words he was a poor person coming from a poor family. Once again i won't bother you with any details only the important stuff so let me say this. 

Jacques always wanted to do something mechanical related but due to a lot of things that happened he went the ''the wrong way'' (religion studies). The person that inspired him to follow his dreams and pursue a career in creating his automatons was a surgeon. I will explain later why is that so, but for note that his most known automatons are the Flute Player, the Tambourine Player and the Digesting Duck.

Source

The Flute Player

The flute player was the automaton that made Jacques famous. In order to create that he needed money and thankfully he found an investor in Brittany. After he came back to France he started creating this automaton. The flute player was made out of wood and painted white to look like a specific type of marble that was famous these days. Also as he wanted to make it as much realistic as possible the height of the robot was similar to that of a man. In other words he built a humanoid robot that was 5 and a half feet tall.

 All three of Vaucanson's Automata  Source: commons.wikipedia.org- Author: Jacques de Vaucanson Licence: PD-US (under Wikipedia.commons attribution) 

The real issue was the flute and especially the sound that will be later coming out of it. He knew that the flute is extremely hard to play in tune as the notes were a result of breathing and different air blowing. At the same time the different shapes of the lip that a person can do and the way he uses his fingers, play an important role to the final outcome. When the Flute player was ready he exhibited in a hotel with groups of 10-15 people at a time and  a price of 3 livres which at that time was considered expensive, so you can say his target group was mostly rich people.

How It Worked?

 Nine bellows were attached to three separate pipes that led into the chest of the figure. Each set of three bellows was attached to a different weight to give out varying degrees of air, and then all pipes joined into a single one, equivalent to a trachea, continuing up through the throat, and widening to form the cavity of the mouth. The lips, which bore upon the hole of the flute, could open and close and move backwards or forwards. Inside the mouth was a moveable metal tongue, which governed the air-flow and created pauses.

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A thing he found out was that the sounds that produced weren't exactly right. The reason behind that was because it was made by wood and wood is different than human skin and way more tough. Here his father's job helped (glove-maker if you recall) so he used skin in the wooden fingers of the Flute Player and everything went fine. 

The Digesting Duck

 Α postulated interior of the Duck of Vaucanson (1738-1739) by an American observer Source: commons.wikipedia.org- Author: Unknown  Licence: Public Domain

Although he made 2 humanoid robots the digesting Duck was his most successful creation. The duck was once again in a real life size and was made by copper. What that duck could do was drink water and at the same time imitating the sounds of a real duck drinking water. The audience could hear swallowing sounds as well as gulping and quacking ones. Also it could eat food and after a while everyone could see the duck pooping.

But there was a catch

Although he did his best on creating a robotic digestive system that looked similar to the real one the duck couldn't digest anything. Once the food entered the duck's mouth it stored in a container and then from another secret compartment the fake duck shit would come out. The fake duck shit was composed of bread crumbs merged with green dye something that fooled everyone.

Conclusion Of Part 2

First of all we all have to understand that without the past knowledge we would have been still at zero. That thing was understandable from all these scholars, scientists and engineers of those past ages but let me be more specific. During Renaissance the ancient Greece's culture and knowledge revival happened. 

That was possible because Arabic scholars kept safe all these documents from that era. As Renaissance's scholars and scientists started reading out what the ancient Greek people have achieved and believed,they tried to add something to that knowledge. Leonardo Da Vinci was largely influenced by Greek anatomists, inventors like Hero of Alexandria and mathematicians and this can be seen through his works. 

Jacques if you recall pursued his career because of a surgeon and later on he became successful. That surgeon helped him understand anatomy so that's why his robots was so similar to an actual human body or muscles.

Also as you can see humanity kept and keep on trying to create humanoid robots and probably will never stop. The flute player shows how advanced and how far the humanoid robotic ''industry'' came by making a robot that could outperform a human in flute. 

Now Next Stop Is Modern Ages (1800+)

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Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci
http://www.techpreview.org/leonardo-da-vincis-mechanical-knight-early-robotics-history/1619/
http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/LeonardoAutomata.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci/Anatomical-studies-and-drawings#ref59786
https://www.therobotsvoice.com/2009/06/the_7_greatest_robots_of_the_early_modern_world.php
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/16/extract.gabywood