Genghis

An insect like hexapod robot on a rock.
Genghis uses 12 motors to balance and crawl. Photo: Carlton SooHoo

Genghis was a six-legged robot built by Rodney Brooks at MIT in the 1980s. It demonstrated how complex behaviors such as crawling can emerge from a network of simple, decentralized controllers.

Creator

MIT

Year
1989
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Categories
A series of photos rotate a hexapod robot with padded yellow legs and a rectangular body full of wires and electronics.
Interactive
See a 360° view of Genghis. Photos: Carlton SooHoo

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Did you know?

The motors that power Genghis's legs are model airplane servos.

A hexapod robot with simple yellow legs and a rectangular body full of wires and electronics.
Genghis negotiates some rough terrain. Photo: Carlton SooHoo
Genghis takes its first steps. Video: MIT

More videos

Audio

Rodney Brooks explains how watching insects walking and falling inspired him to build his hexapod robot Genghis.

Rodney Brooks explains how watching insects walking and falling inspired him to build his hexapod robot Genghis.

Photo: Peter Menzel/Photo Researchers

History

Rodney Brooks started the Genghis project in 1988 in response to a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory workshop on micro spacecraft. One of the goals was to use the robot as a test bed to explore a new control approach Brooks had conceived, the "subsumption architecture." His idea was that complex behavior such as crawling and climbing over obstacles didn't require a central control system but could emerge instead from simple, distributed controllers. Based on his experience with Genghis and other robots, Brooks proposed that exploration of the solar system should rely on cheap, fast missions using large numbers of mass-produced autonomous robots rather than more complex and costly spacecraft. Brooks and Anita M. Flynn described that idea in a 1989 paper entitled "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System." Genghis would later reside at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

An older model of the robot with six golden wheeled legs, a gold rectangular body and a circular piece on top.
Genghis II during a photo session in 1989. Photo: Bruce Frisch/Science Source
A serious man with gray hair sits holding a large robot which has a rectangular body and six simple legs.
Rodney Brooks created hexapod robot Genghis at MIT in 1989. Christopher Michel

Specs

Overview

Equipped with modular subsystems and a subsumption architecture (a control approach linking limited, task-specific perception directly to action).

Status

Discontinued

Year

1989

Website
Width
25 cm
Length
35 cm
Weight
1 kg
Sensors

12 force sensors, six pyroelectric infrared sensors, two inclinometers, two touch-sensitive whiskers.

Actuators

12 model airplane position-controllable servomotors

Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
12
Compute

Four on-board 8-bit microprocessors linked by a 62.5 kilobaud token ring. Total memory of 1 KB of RAM and 10 KB of EPROM.

Software

Distributed control system with incremental software layers (for controlling different behaviors).

Power

Three silver-zinc batteries