Industrial Robot History

Robot­ic Ideas Began Cen­turies Ago:

The idea of an auto­mat­ic device to help serve or work for humans has long been in exis­tence as it is doc­u­ment­ed in his­toric tales, such as ideas like auto­mat­i­cal­ly open­ing doors. 

Around the 9^th cen­tu­ry, hun­dreds of pre­served texts and ideas were accu­mu­lat­ed and came togeth­er to cre­ate a book called ​“The Sci­ence of Inge­nious Mech­a­nisms.” This book and the Renais­sance peri­od com­bined to bring many sci­en­tists and the like (includ­ing da Vin­ci) to imag­i­na­tive­ly cre­ate some of the first automa­tons (objects that move auto­mat­i­cal­ly). Most were cre­at­ed for joy and laugh­ter (The Lady Musi­cian) but they slow­ly began to bring the past chal­lenges to life.

Then, robots devel­oped a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion from a play called ​“Rossum’s Uni­ver­sal Robots” which pre­miered in Prague in 1921. In the play the robots helped with the work human’s would nor­mal­ly do and then revolt­ed, killed their mas­ter, and destroyed all life on earth. The R.U.R. was writ­ten to take place in the 60s, which is actu­al­ly when the indus­tri­al robots made their first appear­ance. Some­time lat­er, a sci­ence fic­tion writer, Isaac Asi­mov, cre­at­ed fun­da­men­tal laws for robots that are still used today. 

Intro­duc­tion to Indus­tri­al Automation:

Fast for­ward hun­dreds of years to the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion. This brought with it an increas­ing demand for pro­duc­tion and con­se­quent­ly, moti­va­tion for automa­tion.

The inven­tion of the Numer­i­cal­ly Con­trolled (NC) machines, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the com­put­er (1950), and the inte­grat­ed cir­cuit (1970s) all helped to make it pos­si­ble to begin to devel­op the very first, yet sim­ple, indus­tri­al robot. 

The first ones were able to replace humans for the heavy, dan­ger­ous, and monot­o­nous tasks. How­ev­er, they had zero exter­nal sens­ing and were used for sim­ple tasks such as pick and place.

Even­tu­al­ly, devel­op­ers were able to cre­ate more com­plex motions, put on exter­nal sen­sors, and add more appli­ca­tions such as weld­ing, grind­ing, debur­ring, and assem­bly. Since then, indus­tri­al robots have been able to cut costs, increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, improve qual­i­ty, and help takeover dan­ger­ous or harm­ful tasks. 

Indus­tri­al Robots are Born:

George Charles Devol, often called the father of robot­ics, invent­ed the first indus­tri­al robot, the Uni­mate, in 1954. A few years lat­er, Devol and entre­pre­neur Joseph F. Engel­berg­er were dis­cussing inter­est­ed at a part and their com­pa­ny, Uni­ma­tion, was born. 

So how exact­ly would you define an indus­tri­al robot? 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. 

The first pro­to­type, Uni­mate, was pro­duced in 1961 and installed in GM’s fac­to­ry for die cast­ing han­dling and spot weld­ing. It cost $65,000 to pro­duce yet was sold for $18,000. After that, GM installed 66 more Uni­mates and Ford became inter­est­ed as well. The indus­tri­al robot future was cer­tain to be bright with all of the auto­mo­tive inter­est and investment. 

Mod­ern indus­tri­al robot arms con­tin­ued to evolve in the 1960’s and 70’s around the globe. The com­pe­ti­tion from com­pa­nies around the world con­tin­ued to pro­duce a high demand for indus­tri­al robots. This spurred fur­ther research and tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment and items such as the devel­op­ment of the micro­proces­sor helped to cre­ate cost-effec­tive con­trol sys­tems that were still powerful. 

In 1963, the six-joint­ed Ran­cho Arm was cre­at­ed to assist hand­i­capped. This was fol­lowed by the ten­ta­cle arm, designed by Mar­vin Min­sky in 1968. It was able to lift a per­son and had 12 joints.

The first suc­cess­ful sto­ry of a busi­ness devel­op­ing a spe­cif­ic robot based on their needs was cre­at­ed in 1967. This com­pa­ny devel­oped a robot to com­plete a spray paint­ing appli­ca­tion and even­tu­al­ly became ABB. This is only one exam­ple of when large com­pa­nies began to devel­op their own indus­tri­al robots. 

So, indus­tri­al robot­ic devel­op­ment con­tin­ued to quick­ly evolve, and in 1969 the Stand­ford Arm even­tu­al­ly led to com­mer­cial arm pro­duc­tion. The Stan­ford Arm was one of the first elec­tron­i­cal­ly pow­ered, com­put­er-con­trolled arms. By 1974, it reached a lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion where it could assem­ble a Mod­el T water pump.

The Stan­ford Arm was fol­lowed by the Sil­ver Arm in 1974. The Sil­ver Arm was cre­at­ed by MIT’s David Sil­ver to per­form pre­cise assem­bly using touch and pres­sure sen­sors and a micro­com­put­er. Dur­ing that same year, these arms led to Vic­tor Schein­man, the inven­tor of the Stan­ford Arm, to form Vic­arm, Inc. to man­u­fac­ture indus­tri­al robot­ic arms. Schein­man was instru­men­tal in the cre­ation of the PUMA (pro­gram­ma­ble uni­ver­sal manip­u­la­tor for assem­bly) for Unimation. 

By the mid­dle of the 1970s, indus­tri­al robots had boomed and were expect­ed to grow at rates around 30% per year. The indus­tri­al robot­ic indus­try offi­cial­ly took off and nev­er looked back. 

In the 1980’s, auto­mo­tive com­pa­nies show­ered robot­ic com­pa­nies with invest­ments. The enthu­si­asm and fund­ing were not always matched with under­stand­ing. Gen­er­al Motors Cor­po­ra­tion spent more than $40 bil­lion on new tech­nol­o­gy in the 1980’s, but a lack of under­stand­ing led to cost­ly robot fias­cos. In 1988, robots at the Ham­tram­ck Michi­gan plant wreaked hav­oc — smash­ing win­dows and paint­ing one anoth­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pre­ma­ture intro­duc­tion of robot­ics began to cre­ate finan­cial instability. 

It was­n’t until recent­ly that the robot­ics indus­try has regained mid-1980 rev­enue lev­els. The Amer­i­can robot­ics mar­ket dis­ap­peared as Japan­ese and Euro­pean bought up companies. 

2010 brought a huge accel­er­a­tion in demand due to the con­tin­ued inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ment and improve­ment of indus­tri­al robots. By 2014, there was a 29% increase in robot sales across the globe. 

It is an excit­ing time to be a part of the robot­ic world as our globe becomes more aware of the amaz­ing ben­e­fits of indus­tri­al robots. 

*his­toric robot facts are from this online source.

*addi­tion­al 2010-present sta­tis­tics can be seen here.

For more infor­ma­tion or to inte­grate an indus­tri­al robot onto your pro­duc­tion line, con­tact Robots​.com experts today; 877−762−6881 or reach rep­re­sen­ta­tives online.