father of ROBOTICS..?

Al-Jazari creates the automation that anticipates today's industrial robots

         most people think that of self-operating machines as twentieth-century inventions. Although Isac Asimov coined the word robotics in 1942, and grey walter built the first electronic autonomous robots in 1948, the first automation for which we have good evidence was a boat with four mechanical musicians. it was built more than eight hundred years ago by islamic scholar Al-Jazar(1150-1220)

"obedience.../makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame/a mechanized automation"

Al-Jazari, considered by some to be the father of robotics, wrote his kitab in about 1206.

A 13th Century Programmable Robot

A team from the USA history channel were on campus last month in the Faculty of Engineering to talk about some very old robots. They were there to film a replica of the mechanism for al-Jazari’s drinking boat; a boat full of musical automata first constructed in 1206. Professor Noel Sharkey from Computer Science built the core of the device –”bodged it together from a pile of rubbish”, he says – to demonstrate how it could have been programmed. The previous claim for the world’s oldest programmable automata is for a machine built by Leonardo da Vinci in 1478.

Al-Jazari’s machine was originally a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. It had two drummers, a harpist and a flautist. Professor Sharkey’s machine has just the one drummer with a drum, cymbals, bells and no body. The flautist is replaced with an Irish penny whistle. He says he wouldn’t risk taking this to any drinking parties round here.

The heart of the mechanism is a rotating cylindrical beam with pegs (cams) protruding from it. These just bump into little levers that operate the percussion. The point of the model is to demonstrate that the drummer can be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs are moved around. In other words it is a programmable drum machine.

“Whether or not al-Jazari dynamically programmed his machines is an intriguing question”, he says, “it is quite likely that he used this method, at the very least, for fine tuning the rhythm of the musicians”.

other important inventions of Al-jazari

The huge "Elephant clock" that stands 8 meters high in the "India" court at the Ibn Battuta shopping mall in Dubai (free photograph by Jonathan Bowen, 2007.) To see the animation of the 3D-model recreated by FSTC of the elephant clock

 al-Jazari's hydropowered saqiya chain pump device

                                           

      One of al-Jazari's candle clocks.

The hand-washing automaton with a flush mechanism designed by al-Jazari.

(Left) A manuscript shows Al-Jazari’s reciprocating pump. This was the first time an illustration of a crank appeared in a manuscript* - 

(Right) 3D animated image of reciprocating pump

and many more which we are using regularly.....