The first robotic arm was installed at the General Motors plant
in Ewing Township, New Jersey in 1962. It was named 'Unimate' and was created by
George Devol. It's task was lifting and stacking hot metal parts. The arm
weighed about 1,815 kilograms and cost $25,000. Before this, robotics were
largely the products of science fiction and the imagination. The development of
robotics was slow for a while, with many of the most useful applications being
involved with space exploration, until the late 1970s when several big Japanese
conglomerates began producing similar industrial
robots.
In 1969 Victor Scheinman at Stanford University invented the
Stanford arm, an all-electric, 6-axis articulated robot designed to permit an
arm solution. This allowed it accurately to follow arbitrary paths in space and
widened the potential use of the robot to more sophisticated applications such
as assembly and welding.
Industrial robotics took off quite quickly in Europe. ABB
Robotics (formerly ASEA) introduced IRB 6, among the world's first commercially
available all electric micro-processor controlled robot. The first two IRB 6
robots were sold to Magnusson in Sweden for grinding and polishing pipe bends
and were installed in production in January 1974. Also in 1973 KUKA Robotics
built its first robot, known as 'FAMULUS', also one of the first articulated
robots to have six electromechanically driven axes. Interest in robotics
increased in the late 1970s and many US companies entered the field, including
large firms like General Electric, and General Motors. Only a few non-Japanese
companies ultimately managed to survive in this
market.
After Henry Ford invented the assembly line, the construction of
automobiles, cars and trucks remained unchanged throughout most of the 20th
century. The use of robots to aid in industrialization weren’t fully realized
until the 1980s, when robotic arms began to be integrated in automobile and
other manufacturing assembly lines.
Robots were initially retained to perform precise welding chores
and other repetitive tasks that humans had long found boring, monotonous and
injurious. By using robots to weld, handle dangerous objects and place items,
auto manufacturers were able to ensure a consistent product with a minimum of
worker injury. Currently, 50 percent of all robots in use today are used in
automobile manufacture.
Below is a link to a timeline of the robotic arm.
history_of_industrial_robotstimeline.docx | |
File Size: | 16 kb |
File Type: | docx |