Automatic Assembly and Robots

Feedback control systems are used extensively in industrial applications. Thousands of industrial and laboratory robots are currently in use. Manipulators can pick up objects weighing hundreds of pounds and position them with an accuracy of onetenth of an inch or better. Automatic handling equipment for home, school, and industry is particularly useful for hazardous, repetitious, dull, or simple tasks. Machines that automatically load and unload, cut, weld, or cast are used by industry to obtain accuracy, safety, economy, and productivity. The use of computers integrated with machines that perform tasks like a human worker has been foreseen by several authors. In his famous 1923 play, entitled R.U.R. , Karel Capek called artificial workers robots, deriving the word from the Czech noun robota, meaning “work.”

As stated earlier, robots are programmable computers integrated with machines, and they often substitute for human labor in specific repeated tasks. Some devices even have anthropomorphic mechanisms, including what we might recognize as mechanical arms, wrists, and hands. An example of an anthropomorphic robot is shown in Figure 1.17.

FIGURE 1.17 The Honda P3 humanoid robot