Robotics Industry

Robotics Industry

As described in the chapter “Technology in Ancient Civilizations – Greek”, robots have been with us for thousands of years, so robotization is nothing new. However, the 20th century saw them come to a whole new level. A Czech writer Karel Capek coined the term robot in 1920, which were humanoid machines designed with the intention of helping people. A robot is non-other thing than a machine designed to accomplish a task. They are machines that use their programming to make decisions. Robots have sensors for input, control systems for decision-making and end effectors for output. Sensors have to be able to detect things like images and sounds accurately. Effectors have to be flexible and fast enough to do what we need them to do, and the control system has to make all the necessary decisions to get the sensors and effectors working together. There are so many kinds of robots that these can vary considerably but that’s In 1925, a mechanical trumpeter was created. In 1937, Elektro became one of the first humanoids. In 1963, the Rancho Arm was the first computer controlled artificial robotic arm. In 1979, RB5X was built with the ability to navigate independently. Other examples include: AIBO ´(1) is a iconic series of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony (1999), ASIMO[65] was designed to be a multi-functional mobile assistant, with aspirations of helping those who lack full mobility (2002), Hydra[66] was a blue box-shaped robot that competes in the Roaming Robots (2005), Reem B[67] is the latest prototype humanoid robot built by PAL Robotics in Spain (2008).

Factory work can be repetitive and often involves lifting heavy stuff. The world’s first industrial robots Unimate Kawasaki (created by George Charles Devol[68]) was installed on a General Motors production line and in New Jersey in 1961, which implied a giant robotic arm for the automotive industry. An Industrial Robot is a mechanical device that is automatically controlled, versatile enough to be programmed to perform a variety of applications, and re-programmable with a large works pace, several degrees of freedom, and the ability to use an arm with different tooling. Soon other companies installed their own robotic arms. The IBB 6 was the first electric industrial robot that was controlled by a microcomputer, with 16 KB of RAM, it was programmable and could display four whole digits with it’s leds. It was designed and manufactured by Sony (1999), ASIMO[65] was designed to be a multi-functional mobile assistant, with aspirations of helping those who lack full mobility (2002), Hydra[66] was a blue box-shaped robot that competes in the Roaming Robots (2005), Reem B[67] is the latest prototype humanoid robot built by PAL Robotics in Spain (2008). Factory work can be repetitive and often involves lifting heavy stuff. The world’s first industrial robots Unimate Kawasaki (created by George Charles Devol[68]) was installed on a General Motors production line and in New Jersey in 1961, which implied a giant robotic arm for the automotive industry. An Industrial Robot is a mechanical device that is automatically controlled, versatile enough to be programmed to perform a variety of applications, and re-programmable with a large works pace, several degrees of freedom, and the ability to use an arm with different tooling. Soon other companies installed their own robotic arms. The IBB 6 was the first electric industrial robot that was controlled by a microcomputer, with 16 KB of RAM, it was programmable and could display four whole digits with it’s leds. It was a crucial step towards developing robots that were easier to program. In order to advance in the field of robotics, engineers had to get into the field of Artificial Intelligence. It is any attempt to robotize activities usually associated with humans: translate languages, play chess or recognize objects. In the 60s, even if AIs were getting better at reasoning tasks, it was incredibly difficult to actually get the programs to interact with the real world. The robot’s picture is also about recognizing objects so they can react to things and situations in real time. By the late 1970s, they had developed algorithms that allowed cameras to recognize edges and shapes by using visual queues like highlights and shadows. In 1981, the first robots got the gift of vision implementing a system called Consight, in which different robots can use 6 different auto-parts as 1400 hours moved by a conveyer belt. Today, factories have installed an assembly line that handles all of it’s production.

An example of a company that leads change in the robotics field is ABB Group[69]. A Swedish-Swiss group, ABB is the world’s largest builder of electrical grids and is active in many sectors, it’s core businesses being in power and automation technologies. It is engaged in industries such as are electrification products, discrete automation and motion, process automation, power grids, corporate and education.  The robotics industry has advanced a lot in the last few years, bringing a huge acceleration with continued development and improvement of industrial robots. The industry has seen an incredible amount of innovation and improvements, while we enter an era of robotics, one where collaboration between humans and robots is a reality. Recent advances have enabled a generation than can safely work NeXT to people.