Quote:
Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha
You primarily just need to postulate that form gives function, so that if you build a two legged robot that forms gives it the function to walk, and you don't need to program it how to walk, just program it where to walk.
With the given that form gives function you can easily have clockwork robots receiving instructions from Punch Cards, pretty much in the same way you can feed instructions to a Golem by putting notes in his mouth.
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Walking Robots date to Da Vinci. His were mindless automotauns, big wind up toys. Japan had walking bots as well. Walking balance can "easily" be done by purely mechanical reflexes; the computer doesn't have to compute it, just tell it forward, backward, left or right turn, and leave the gyro to keep it stable.
Any realistic robot in such a situation is likely an industrial tool. It might have a sensor for the part it needs being present, but it should be about brain dead. But, give it a new program...
Also, it should be slow.
As for miniaturization: the components used by Babbage were not small; his analytical engine could be scaled down readily; watchmakers of the period routinely (and still do) make fairly standardized parts in sizes much smaller than Babbage had by 2-4 orders of magnitude. 3 orders converts cubic meters to liters, and his Analytical Engine was, using the parts he did, supposed to be about 5 cubic meters. Swiss watches of the 1930's were quite accurate; top-end non-digital watches are not much better accuracy now than then.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/imag.../10303307.aspx shows Doron Swade with his build of the difference engine. The parts can be seen, and could easily be compressed vertically. Henry Babbage himself implies this in his paper on it...
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/hpb.html
Swade and the other modern builders did so to the original plans with common manufactury techniques; the high end watchmakers were using far superior machining.