Smart Manufacturing

CHAPTER 13Robotics

Thomas Paral, PhD

Introduction

The history of robotics is heavily connected to the history of gripping, sensing, and control. Whether a robot needs to do material or any other handling, an end-of-arm tool is necessary.

In 1946, Del Harder started his job as technical director at Ford; he started the first discussion about full automated production lines. His focus was to analyze the value chain in the production to increase efficiency and productivity. The first industrial robot dates back to the early 1950s. In 1954, George Devol applied for a US patent with his idea of Programmed Article Transfer. In 1956, George Devol and Joe Engelberger started their work in developing the first robot. In early 1960, they founded the company Unimate and launched their first product, called Unimate-Robot. This prototype of modern robots had a weight of two tons, and the program was stored on magnetic drums.

General Motors was the first customer; they installed a robot in their production at New Jersey in 1961. The first automated application with a robot was in the foundry of the plant. They bought the robot, which cost Unimate-Robot $65,000 to produce, for $18,000. In the same year, George Devol finally got his robot patent filed.

Industrial Robots

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines industrial robots in its ISO 8373:2021 standard as “an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator that is programmable in three or more ...