industrial robotics - a very commonly discussed topic

Industrial robots today – a commonly discussed topic in robotics.

There is extensive debate about what a robot consists of. Some people insist it has to be bipedal, interact with humans and be able to think on its own. There are already robots like this, albeit experimental. The most well known one of this form is ASIMO. It is a research robot by Honda - more about this in a later article.

Robots, and more specifically robotics, have become very useful in industry. In these instances, they perform tasks too dangerous or too repetitive for humans to do. You will see them in manufacturing, parts fabrication, and so on. There is an ISO standard for industrial robots, which ensures a minimum standard to classify an industrial robot as a robot. The ISO definition is:

an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes

What does this mean for you?

This means you have probably worked with a robot if you have programmed a piece of equipment to do a specific task for you. If you have worked alongside a piece of equipment that fast and precise, you have worked alongside a robot.

Robots are very common in industries that carry a fair amount of danger, or a lot of repetition in the work. For example, robotic arms with welders are used in the automotive industry to weld car parts together. As you can imagine, the precision and repetition of the work would ensure a greater chance of a defective vehicle, or that there is an accident in the workplace. Robots have not completely taken over every possible job imaginable. You still need humans to weld the intricate parts together, and to ensure that everything is ‘correct’ (i.e. to spec). A robot would not be able to see the fine details.