Takashi Gomi: a bridge builder in robotics
Takashi Gomi’s death in September 2013 has left an enormous gap in the lives of his family and friends. Here I pay tribute to his multiple roles in bridging many gaps – so uniquely and charismatically – in the field of robotics over several decades. He was a principal player in the development of autonomous and evolutionary robotics over this period. He called his approach Non-Cartesian robotics, others used different terms such as Behavior Based Robotics or Nouvelle AI for broadly similar ideas; what united them was a critical rejection of many of the classical robotic assumptions that have been loosely called GOFAI – Good Old-Fashioned AI.