Some of these patterns of performance were calculable, though only as types of behaviour, in advance; some were quite unforeseen. - William Grey Walter

[A]n electro-mechanical creature which behaves so much like an animal that it has been known to drive a not usually timid lady upstairs to lock herself in her bedroom, an interesting blend of magic and science.

The first notion of constructing a free goal-seeking mechanism goes back a wartime talk with the psychologist, , whose untimely death was one of the greatest losses Cambridge has suffered in years. When he was engaged on a warjob for the Government, he came to get the help of an automatic analyzer with some very complicated curves he had obtained, curves relating to the aiming errors of air gunners. Goal-seeking missiles were literally much in the air in those days; so, in our minds, were scanning mechanisms. Long before the home study was turned into a workshop, the two ideas, goal-seeking and scanning, had combined as the essential mechanical conception of a working model that would behave like a very simple animal.

The mechanism of learning is of course one of the most enthralling and baffling mysteries in the field of biology.