UWA Telerobot

The UWA telerobot is a historic landmark for the Internet and The University of Western Australia (UWA). It was the first teleoperable industrial robot made available for general use on the Internet in 1994. The UWA telerobot was originally developed as part of a PhD thesis by Dr Kenneth Taylor and was the subject of a later PhD by Dr Barney Dalton.

The first robot on the Internet, a plastic toy robot with only 2 degrees of freedom, was placed online by a team under Ken Goldberg at the University of Southern California only three weeks before the UWA team released their website. The USC robot only lasted for seven months. The UWA robot is still online today, although the original robot was replaced in 1996 and the robot is no longer available for unrestricted public access, though interested parties can request permission.