The Pluto robot started as a continuation of Hans Moravec's work in navigation at Stanford and evolved to include other focuses. One such area was creating a mobile robot which could later have a robotic arm attached, inspired by Hari Asada and Takeo Kanade's work with direct drive arms. Pluto also featured omnidirectional wheels but unfortunately ran into a number of functional issues, leading to the construction of Neptune to complete work on navigation.
