Robot Hall Of Fame 2012 Nominees (PHOTOS) (VIDEO)

Robot Hall Of Fame 2012 Nominees Announced

The Robot Hall of Fame is asking for the public's help in deciding on four automatons to be inducted into its hallowed halls.

A dozen robots have been nominated to take their place alongside R2-D2 and Honda's Asimo.

This year's slate of inductees include the star of Pixar's 2008 movie Wall-E, the 'Big Dog' robotic mule developed by the US military and the Robonaut, which recently made it to the International Space Station.

A group of 107 robotics experts selected by the Robot Hall of Fame decided on the nominees.

The winners will be determined by a public vote and a survey of those experts.

The Robot Hall of Fame mirrors similar institutions dedicated to rock stars and American football players.

It was created in 2003 by Carnegie Mellon University, and is located at the centre's 'RoboWorld' exhibit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

"The Robot Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are always great fun and have been a highlight of previous RoboBusiness events in Pittsburgh," said Dan Kara, chairman of the RoboBusiness Leadership Summit. "We love robots and we love to see their inventors and creators get the public recognition they deserve."

The full list of nominees is as follows:

  • Aldebaran Robotics’ NAO, a 22-inch-tall humanoid that is widely used in education worldwide;
  • iRobot’s Create, a programmable robot based on the company’s popular robotic vacuum cleaner, Roomba;
  • VEX Robotics Design System, a kit for designing and building robots that is widely used in the classroom and in competitions.

  • WALL-E, a waste-collecting robot that is the hero, love interest and namesake of Pixar’s 2008 computer-animated science fiction film
  • Johnny 5, a prototype military robot that learns to reject destruction and embrace life in the 1986 science fiction comedy, “Short Circuit”;
  • Rosie, a maid robot with motherly qualities that took care of a human family on The Jetsons, a Hanna-Barbera animated sitcom first broadcast on ABC in 1962.
  • iRobot’s PackBot, which performs bomb disposal and other dangerous assignments for the US military;
  • Kiva System’s autonomous warehouse robots, which speed the processing of customer orders. (Amazon Inc. acquired Kiva earlier this year);
  • Jason, a remotely operated vehicle designed and built by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has explored hydrothermal vents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans; a prototype,
  • BigDog, a four-legged robot the size of a large dog or small mule, was developed by Boston Dynamics for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to walk, run or climb with heavy loads over rough terrain;
  • PR2, a two-armed robot built by Willow Garage that can navigate human environments and has the dexterity to grasp and manipulate objects;
  • Robonaut, a dexterous, two-armed robot developed by NASA’s Johnson Space Center to help humans work in space; the latest version, Robonaut 2, was launched to the International Space Station in February 2011.