What did you know about Industrial Robots ?

 An Industrial Robot 

         An industrial robot is a robot system used for manufacturing. Industrial robots are automated, programmable and capable of movement on three or more axes. Typical applications of robots include welding, painting, assembly, disassembly, pick and place for printed circuit boards, packaging and labeling, palletizing, product inspection, and testing; all accomplished with high endurance, speed, and precision. They can assist in material handling.

                                      The invention of the industrial robot dates back to1954 when George Devol filed a patent on a programmed article transfer. After teaming up with Joseph Engel Berger, the first robot company, Uni mation, was founded and put the first robot into service at a General Motors plant in 1961 for extracting part from a die-casting machine. Most of the hydraulically actuated Unimates were sold through the following years for workpiece handling and for spot-welding of car bodies. Both applications were successful, which means that the robots worked reliably and ensured uniform quality.

                    Most robots today can trace their origin to early industrial robot designs. Much of the technology that makes robots more human-friendly and adaptable for different applications has emerged from manufacturers of industrial robots. Industrial robots are by far the largest commercial application of robotics technology today. All the important foundations for robot control were initially developed with industrial applications in mind. These applications deserve special attention in order to understand the origin of robotics science and to appreciate many unsolved problems that still prevent the wider use of robots in manufacturing. In this chapter we present a brief history and descriptions of typical industrial robotics applications. We show how robots with different mechanisms fit different applications. Even though robots are well established in large-scale manufacturing, particularly in automobile and related component assembly, there are still many challenging problems to solve. The range of feasible applications could significantly increase if robots were easier to install, to integrate with other manufacturing processes, and to program, particularly with adaptive sensing and automatic error recovery.

Different kind of Industrial Robots -

• Linear robots (including cartesian and gantry robots)
• SCARA robots 
• Articulated robots 
• Parallel robots (delta)
• Cylindrical robots 
• Dual arm robots
• Articulated robots
• Others

Advantages of Industrial Robots -     

• Optimized production efficiency means that a general manager will be able to have set quantity and quality standards that will be met by robots. Production quotas will not be jeopardized by low concentration, break time and employee injuries, among other things. The efficiency of production forecasts and supply levels will be increased with robots, able to be programmed to work at the optimal speed for a given plant.

•          Limiting human work in hazardous environments, because manufacturing jobs often place workers at more physical risk compared to a lot of other industries. Lowering the level of a hazard presented to employees on the job is attractive to executives to preserve company reputation and minimize potential legal liabilities. Riskier industries like manufacturing and mining, who have notorious disasters like that of the Upper Big Branch Mine, look to robots for their ability to replace unskilled workers doing necessary jobs in hazardous environments.

•       Cost-effectiveness is one of the most sound arguments to be made for the case of industrial robots. Robots will reduce production costs by eliminating internal costs to compensate human salaries. Businesses are forecasting that their profitability will increase once they implement robots into production, or that they will have more financial mobility to invest in new products or technologies.

•     Quality assurance is expected with the use of machinery in production. Industrial robots will be able to ensure consistency with mass production of manufactured products. The possible human error that assembly line workers pose the threat of will be removed.

Disadvantages of Industrial Robots - 

• Increased investment costs are a financial counterpoint to industrial robots, with the idea that manufacturing companies will rack up their debt investing in robotic technology. Firms that do not have the funding might even go bankrupt in an effort to keep up with industry trends rather than continue on with normalized operations.
• Elimination of a whole labor class would presumably occur a bit of a ways down the road, but the implications of this point are too large not to consider. Bringing in robots to take unskilled labor jobs will place more pressure on the economy, education system, and financial market, just to name a few. The United States has always been associated with the grit and work ethic of its blue-collar workers, and robots are threatening to eliminate this aspect of the human population, with a takeover of production jobs. 
• Job loss is by far the most significant opposition frequently brought against the use of robots in the manufacturing industry. Industry workers of all levels, from entry-level to veterans, worry about the security of their employment status, and the ability of their job to be replaced by a robot. This panic is more widespread in this industry compared to others because of the closer immanence of a robot takeover in manufacturing. 
• Marco effects are another topic that usually comes up with job loss. More “big picture” thinkers wonder how the national, and eventually global economy will be affected when manufacturing workers’ jobs are displaced. How can this mass unemployment possibly be compensated for, and how can the robots’ presumed success be limited from seeping into other industries? CNN offered an incredibly poignant parallel, saying that horses to cars are what human workers are to robots. The horse population peaked in the US about a century ago since they were the main form of transportation. But these numbers have steadily declined ever since cars hit the mainstream. Jobs that do not require as much human analytical thought are more vulnerable because they are easier for machines to handle, with the replacement of EZ Pass toll operators being a good example.

Thank you so much for referred this.

Uditha C Amarasena.