Today, at my school a pioneer in Artifical Intelligence (AI) named Peter Hart came to give a lecture about the first actual robot (SHAKEY) that he contributed to and the two algorithms he co-invented (A* search algorithm and the Hough transform).
It was the first general-purpose mobile robot to be able to reason its own actions. SHAKEY was able to anaylze actions and “think like a human”. . Even if SHAKEY was part of artifical intelligence, it still was rudimental and limited. SHAKEY has opened up the field of artifical intelligence and inspired many other projects.
A* search Algorithm helped SHAKEY navigate through obstacles. But it isn’t only that. Part of A*search Algorithm has been used in the GPS to navigate. A* has also inspired other algorithms like B*, C*, and D*. D* is currently being used for navigating rovers on Mars, like Curiosity ad Opportunity.
The purpose of the technique is to find imperfect instances of objects within a certain class of shapes by a voting procedure.[Wikipedia]
Thank you to Mr.Peter Hart and Maya Segal (my classmate) for making this happen!