The purpose of this project was to discover if a robot could navigate using a system based on parallax to optically analyze its environment, and if so, find the most efficient means possible. The robot is named after Karel Capek, who created the word robot. You may be aware of the 1970’s robot Shakey, which was able to analyze the images it received via a camera, and navigate a room. However, Shakey cheated; it worked in a room with white floors filled with colored simple shapes. If Shakey was put in a kitchen, it would be unable to function because it's incapable of recognizing anything except simple shapes. This is why to this day most robots employ methods such as sonar to probe their environments.

Capek1 doesn't have Shakey's problems. It can use its camera (combined with other equipment) to build a map of the world around it. Those who have followed in Shakey’s footsteps are trying to build robots that see in the same way humans do, and have made little progress. There is no reason why a robot’s vision system should emulate that of a human. Capek1 doesn’t see like a human, it sees like a robot.