The Soul of the Robot in John Sladek's "Roderick". Brian Stableford's review compared Bayley's absurd stylings with that of Alfred Jarry, concluding that the book was "thoroughly likeable." Alastair Reynolds remembered the "massive enjoyment" he had reading the book and mentioned that Jasperodus had formed part of the inspiration for the character of Hesperus in "House of Suns". The Soul of the Robot The Soul of the Robot is the sixth science fiction novel by Barrington J. Bayley, featuring the character Jasperodus from his 1956 story "Fugitive". The book tells of Jasperodus, the only robot with a soul, as he attempts to prove that he
Flakey the robot Flakey the robot Flakey the robot was a research robot created at SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center and was the successor to Shakey the robot. Most of Flakey's routines were written in Lisp, with some lower-level code written in C. The code maintains a "Local Perceptual Space" that is updated by the sensors and acted on by planning algorithms. It was about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide, and included 12 sonar sensors, optical wheel encoders, a video camera, and a depth-finding laser. Flakey was used to demonstrate fuzzy logic and goal-oriented behavior - it would take what it