Robots from Japan

Wood­en wind-up dolls appeared in Japan as ear­ly as the 17^th cen­tu­ry. Japan’s inter­est in robots has con­tin­ued ever since. A machine that wore a kimono and served tea is espe­cial­ly famous, as it is con­sid­ered one of the world’s first robots. It car­ried a bowl of tea on a tray to a guest, wait­ed until the guest replaced the bowl, and then returned to the host. The Japan­ese do not feel threat­ened by robots as some oth­er coun­tries do, and robot­ics tech­nol­o­gy in Japan has the poten­tial to push the enve­lope in many kinds of applications.

The his­to­ry of Fanuc, cre­at­ed in Japan, has been rec­og­nized as the his­to­ry of CNC itself. In 1956, the first Numer­i­cal Con­trol sys­tem in the Japan­ese pri­vate sec­tor was devel­oped suc­cess­ful­ly. By 1960, the first open loop NC, Fanuc 220, was devel­oped. Fanuc now also has major cor­po­ra­tion head­quar­ters in the Unit­ed States and Lux­em­bourg as well. Through­out the years, Fanuc has proved to be the lead­ing glob­al man­u­fac­tur­er of fac­to­ry automa­tion. A total of 250,000 robots are installed world­wide, suit­able for appli­ca­tions such as assem­bly, pack­ing, machine tend­ing, mate­r­i­al removal, weld­ing, and dis­pens­ing.

The Japan­ese are at the fore­front of using ser­vice robots, robots that are used out­side an indus­tri­al facil­i­ty. Ser­vice robots can be used for pro­fes­sion­al jobs like mil­i­tary tasks, under­wa­ter jobs, clean­ing haz­ardous waste, etc. They can also be tapped for per­son­al use, like house clean­ing and enter­tain­ment. One area in which per­son­al robots are being used more fre­quent­ly is in the care for the elder­ly. Because more than a fifth of the pop­u­la­tion in Japan is elder­ly, there are increas­ing­ly few­er num­bers of young peo­ple to care for them. Robots can pro­vide phys­i­cal ser­vices such as car­ry­ing elder­ly peo­ple or doing their day-to-day tasks.

Japan is the coun­try that is prob­a­bly clos­est to a future where robots and humans live togeth­er com­pat­i­bly. Robots have already infil­trat­ed the Japan­ese fac­to­ries; human work­ers might be greet­ed on their first day by a robot recep­tion­ist. While robots are a long way from match­ing human expres­sions and emo­tions, engi­neer­ing stu­dents in Japan are work­ing on a robot face that can sim­u­late six basic expres­sions. Humanoid robots are just the tip of the ice­berg, how­ev­er. Japan­ese robot­ic com­pa­nies are work­ing to dis­cern exact­ly which types of robots that peo­ple will buy and use.

Japan also intends for robots to replen­ish the work­force as more human work­ers retire. As the cost of machin­ery decreas­es, labor costs are increas­ing. Robots can replace work­ers, which great­ly boosts pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Robots don’t claim over­time or demand pen­sions when they retire, either. The coun­try is hop­ing to install one mil­lion indus­tri­al robots through­out the coun­try by 2025. 

Robots​.com is a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor of Fanuc indus­tri­al robots. If you are look­ing to auto­mate your pro­duc­tion line or need an upgrade, con­tact us today online or at 877−762−6881.