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"I've been very obsessive about writing science fiction for far too many years. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have given up years ago."
- Charles Stross

Vision Strip  
  A circular vision strip for robots.  

A strangely modern presentiment of machine vision.

Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.


(Robots from 'Orphans of the Void' by Michael Shaara)

A band of clear, plastic like stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.

Technovelgy from Orphans of the Void, by Orville Shaara.
Published by Galaxy in 1952
Additional resources -

Compare to this very early reference to Computer Vision (Artificial Eye) from The Metal Giants (1925) by Edmond Hamilton.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Orphans of the Void
  More Ideas and Technology by Orville Shaara
  Tech news articles related to Orphans of the Void
  Tech news articles related to works by Orville Shaara

Vision Strip-related news articles:
  - Prosthetic Vision Device ala Star Trek

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Science Fiction in the News

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'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'

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'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'

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'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'

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'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'

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'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'

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'Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted.'

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'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'

Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'

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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'

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'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'

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