Shrdlu

en.wikipedia.org
April 29, 2026
9 min read
44/100
Summary
SHRDLU is an early natural-language understanding program developed by Terry Winograd at MIT between 1968 and 1970. It was written in Micro Planner and Lisp and ran on the PDP-6 operating system.
Key Takeaways
- SHRDLU is an early natural-language understanding program developed by Terry Winograd at MIT between 1968 and 1970.
- The program allows users to interact with a virtual "blocks world" using simple English commands to manipulate objects.
- SHRDLU incorporates a basic memory system to maintain context and can answer questions about previous interactions and the state of the world.
- The name SHRDLU is derived from the arrangement of letter keys on a Linotype machine, reflecting the frequency of letter usage in English.
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