The robot story

The author discusses the evolution of the industrial robot and the enabling technologies which dominate the subject of robotics. In the early 1960s the available supporting technology in electronics and computing was not sufficiently well developed to expect a successful industrial robot to take its place in the manufacturing scene. It was not until the mid 1970s that the robot started to make an important contribution to quality and productivity, but in a relatively limited range of product manufacture. The domestic developments in microelectronics and computing played their part in strengthening the subject of robotics, particularly in the implementation of sensor-guided applications. In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a surge of interest in robotics, both from industry and from research laboratories. The promise of the new technology started to fall short of expectations. Robotics is now recovering from this position, with the major research laboratories producing good results but manufacturing industry being ultra cautious in investing heavily again. The author discusses: the anatomy of robots; sensing and sensors for robots; sensor fusion and steropsis; knowledge representation; task planning; knowledge engineering; assembly; and mobile robots