The first company to produce an industrial robot was Unimation, founded by Joseph F. Engelberger in 1962, with the basic inventions of George Devol.
 
Unimation robots were also called programmable transfer machines since their main use at first was to transfer objects from one point to another, less than a dozen feet or so apart. They used hydraulic actuators and were programmed in joint coordinates, i.e. the angles of the various joints were stored during a teaching phase and replayed in operation.
 
For some time Unimation's only competitor was Cincinnati Milacron Inc. of Ohio. This changed radically in the late 1970s when several big Japanese conglomerates began producing similar industrial robots. Unimation had obtained patents in the United States but not in Japan, so their designs were copied and then improved upon in that country.
   

 

 

 

A Brief History of Robots:

c. 270 BC - Greek engineer Ctesibus makes organs and water clocks with movable figures.

1921 - The term "robot" is first used in "Rossum's Universal Robots," a play by Czech writer Karel Capek.

1941 - Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov coins the word, "robotics." 

1948 - "Cybernetics", an influence on artificial intelligence research, is published by Norbert Wiener

1956 - George Devol and Joseph Engelberger forms the world's first robot company.

1963 - The first artificial robotic arm controlled by a computer designed.

1968 - Marvin Minsky develops the octopus-like Tentacle Arm. 

1970 - "Shakey," the first mobile robot, is built.

1974 - The Silver Arm performs small-parts assembly using feedback from touch and pressure sensors.