An anatomy of industrial robots and their controls

Abstract

In the United States, commercially available industrial robots perform very well in limited areas of industrial tasks such as arc welding, paint spraying, etc. These tasks mainly involve synchronization but no task interaction. A close examination of the basic structure and controls of the robots reveals their resulting limitations which lead to unnatural specifications and inefficient performance of task interactions. It is our opinion that, to expand the range of robot tasks to include labor intensive jobs such as product assembly, sensors of multiple purposes must be added onto the robots and integrated into their control systems. Computer command language must be developed to enable nonexpert users to operate the robots, and a work-method must be available for analyzing robot time-motion so that the robots can be programmed to achieve best efficiency with least production cost.