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Advances in Historical Studies, 2019, 8, 24-35
http://www.scirp.org/journal/ahs
ISSN Online: 2327-0446
ISSN Print: 2327-0438
DOI:
10.4236/cm.2019.81002 Feb. 15, 2019 24 Advances in Historical Studies
A Brief History of Industrial Robotics in the
20th Century
A. Gasparetto, L. Scalera
Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Udine, Udine, Italy
Abstract
Industrial robotics is a branch of robotics that gained paramount importance
in the last century. The presence of robots totally
revolutionized the industrial
environment in just a few decades. In this paper, a brief history of industrial
robotics in the 20th century will be presented, and a proposal for classifying
the evolution of industrial robots into four generations is set for
ward. The
characteristics of the robots belonging to each generation are mentioned, and
the evolution of their features is described. The most significant milestones of
the history of industrial robots, from the 1950’s to the end of the century, are
mentio
ned, together with a description of the most representative industrial
robots that were designed and manufactured in those decades.
Keywords
Industrial Robots, History, Unimate, Stanford Arm, Delta Robot
1. Introduction
The idea to design and build some sort of beings, or devices that could carry out
repetitive or heavy tasks, thus relieving men from this burden, dates back to an-
cient times. Since the Greek-Hellenistic age some of these devices, which were
named
automata
, have been designed and created by ingenious inventors, be-
longing to several different civilizations through the centuries. The term “auto-
mata” mainly refers to human-like devices, while the term “robot” has a more
general meaning.
The origin of the term “robot” is placed in more recent times: namely, it
comes from the Czech word “robota”, meaning “heavy work” or “forced labour”.
The introduction of this term is due to the Czech writer Karel Čapek (1890-1938),
who used it for the first time in 1920 in his novel “R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal
Robots” (Čapek, 2004).
How to cite this paper:
Gasparetto, A., &
Scalera
, L. (2019). A Brief History of In-
dustrial Robotics in the 20th Century
.
A
d-
vances in Historical Studies
, 8,
24-35.
https://doi.org/10.4236/cm.2019.81002
Received:
January 15, 2019
Accepted:
February 12, 2019
Published:
February 15, 2019
Copyright © 201
9 by author(s) and
Scientific
Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution International
License (CC BY
4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access
A. Gasparetto, L. Scalera
DOI:
10.4236/cm.2019.81002 25 Advances in Historical Studies
On the other hand, the word “Robotics” was employed for the first time by
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) in his novel “Runaround” (1942), contained in the
famous series “I, Robot”. In that novel he defined three rules concerning the be-
havior of robots and the interaction with humans: these rules would later be
named the three Laws of Robotics (Asimov, 1942).
In the literature, there are not so many works dealing with Robotics from a
historical perspective. For instance, Ceccarelli dealt with this topic in (Ceccarelli,
2001) and (Ceccarelli, 2004), while Gasparetto (2016) presents a historical out-
line of robotics from ancient times until the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial applications of Robotics gained a paramount importance in the last
century. The beginning of “Industrial Robotics”, as we currently define it, can be
dated back to the 1950’s, although some kinds of automatization in the industrial
environment started to appear since the times of the Industrial Revolution.
In this paper, the main milestones of the history of industrial robotics, from
its beginning (in the 1950’s and even earlier) to the end of the 20th century, will
be mentioned and described.
The evolution of industrial robots can be subdivided in four categories, as in
(Zamalloa, 2017), the first three covering the timespan from the 1950’s to the
end of the 1990’s. The robots of the fourth generation (which ranges from 2000
to nowadays), that are characterized by high-level “intelligent” features (such as
the capability of performing advanced computations, logical reasoning, deep
learning, complex strategies, collaborative behavior), are not analyzed in this
paper.
In the scientific literature, not so many works on the history of industrial ro-
bots are present. In some books, such as in (Ceccarelli, 2004), (Mathia, 2010),
(Siciliano & Khatib, 2008), and (Westerlund, 2000), there are some sketches on
this topic, which could also be found in some internal reports, e.g. in (Lagerberg
& Jonson, 2016) and (Wallen, 2008).
2. The First Generation of Industrial Robots (1950-1967)
Some Authors (Zamalloa, 2017) proposed a chronological categorization of in-
dustrial robots, by defining four “generations”.
The first generation of industrial robot spans from 1950 to 1967. The robots of
this generation were basically programmable machines that did not have the
ability to really control the modality of task execution; moreover, they had no
communication with the external environment. With respect to the hardware,
the first generation robots were provided with low-tech equipment, and ser-
vo-controllers were not present (Wallen, 2008). A peculiar feature of these ro-
bots is the strong noise they produced, when their arms collided with the me-
chanical stops built to limit the movement of the axes. With respect to the actu-
ators, almost all the first generation robots employed pneumatic actuators and
were controlled by a sort of “logic gates” acting as automatic regulators. Such
“logic gates” were basically cams which activated pneumatic valves, or relays
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which controlled solenoid valves. Finally, the tasks that the first generation ro-
bots were capable to perform were necessarily quite trivial, such as load-
ing-unloading or simple material handling operations.
The history of industrial robotics is conventionally set in the 1950’s, although
some developments in automation had taken place before: namely, a “program-
mable” paint-sprayer device invented by Pollard and Roselund in 1938 (Koetsier,
2019), and a tele-operated “manipulator” invented by Goertz in 1949, for in-
stance. However, the turning point for industrial robotics was due to the genius
of George Devol, who designed in 1954 a “Programmable Article Transfer” (this
was the name given when the patent request (Devol, 1954) was filed). Such a de-
vice was the base for the development of Unimate, that is considered the first
“true” industrial robot in history.
Devol (Malone, 2011), who was basically a scientist, needed an entrepreneuri-
al mate with whom set up in a more concrete way his idea of a robotic manipu-
lator which could be used to automatize industrial processes. In 1954 he met Jo-
seph Engelberger, an engineer employed in the spatial industry, and they agreed
on setting up a company which could manufacture robots for industrial applica-
tions. This led to the foundation of a company named Unimaton, which pro-
duced in 1961 the first Unimate robot (Figure 1). Unimate, which was hydraul-
ically actuated, was immediately installed in an automotive company, namely in
the General Motors factory located in Trenton (New Jersey, USA), where it was
employed to extract parts from a die-casting machine (as mentioned earlier, it
was used for a single task, because it was very complicated to reprogram it). In
the following years, several other Unimates were installed in automotive facto-
ries, where were mainly employed for spot-welding of cars and for handling of
workpieces (Wallen, 2008).
In the same years, several robot manufacturing companies were born, due to
the fact that many entrepreneurs understood that this kind of devices had great
potentialities, especially in the automotive sector. Companies like Ford and
General Motors started to consider the automatization of their productive plants
and needed device such as the new robot to achieve this goal. Thus, there was a
sudden increase in the orders of robotic devices, which gave the opportunity to
thrive to many robot manufacturers.
One of such companies was, for instance, AMF Corporation: in 1962 they
manufactured a new robot that was called Versatran (i.e. “versatile transfer”). It
was a cylindrical robot (Figure 2) that was ordered by Ford for its production
plants in Canton (Ohio, USA), thus enjoying a good popularity (Birnie, 1974).
The Versatran was also the first robot to be installed in a productive site in Japan
(1967). In 1969, the presence of robots in Japanese companies had a significant
increase, also due to the fact that Unimation allowed to Kawasaki Heavy Indus-
tries Ltd. the license to produce robots for the Japanese and the Asian market. In
particular, this led to the development of the Kawasaki-Unimate 2000, the first
industrial robot ever built in Japan.
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10.4236/cm.2019.81002 27 Advances in Historical Studies
Figure 1. Joseph Engelberger and George Devol (left); the Unimate robot (right).
Figure 2. The Versatran robot.
Since then, Japan became one of the leading countries in the world in the field
of industrial robotics. It was in Japan that the first national robotic association in
the world was founded in 1971, namely JIRA (Japanese Robotics Association).
The diffusion of robots in Europe took place more or less at the same time as
in Japan, namely in the second half of the 1960’s. The first robotic installation in
Europe appeared in 1967 in the company Svenska Metallverken located in Up-
plands Väsby (Sweden): it consisted of robots carrying out simple pick-and-place
tasks (Wallen, 2008). Two years later, in Norway, the first painting robot was
manufactured by the Tralffa Company and installed in a plant for wheelbarrow
painting.
The appearance of robots allowed to automatize important production tasks
such as welding. Unimation was the first company to manufacture welding ro-
bots, while General Motors was the first company to install this kind of robotic
devices at their automotive plants in Lordstown (Ohio, USA) in 1969. Three
years after, FIAT installed the first welding robots in Europe at their plants in
Turin (Italy).
3. The Second Generation of Industrial Robots (1968-1977)
The industrial robots of the second generation (conventionally ranging from
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10.4236/cm.2019.81002 28 Advances in Historical Studies
1968 to 1977) were basic programmable machines with limited possibilities of
self-adaptive behavior and elementary capabilities to recognize the external en-
vironment (Zamalloa, 2017). These robots used servo-controllers, which enabled
them to perform both point-to-point motion, and continuous paths as well.
Their control system consisted of microprocessors or of Programmable Logic
Controllers (PLC), and they could be also programmed by an operator by means
of a teach box. With respect to those belonging to the first generation, these ro-
bots could carry out more complex tasks (e.g. control of work centers). However,
their level of versatility was not very high, because each robot had its own soft-
ware, which was dedicated to a specific task. Hence, these robots turned out to
be application-specific devices, meaning that it was very difficult to employ the
same robot for different tasks, since this would require a substantial modifica-
tion of the controller, and a thorough reprogramming of the operating software.
With respect to diagnostics, the robots of the second generation were not very
performant, since the only diagnostic reports they could produce were those re-
lated to failures, which were reported by means of indicator lights, without any
hint related to the cause of the failure that was left to the operator to trace.
At the beginning of the history of industrial robotics, the robots had hydraulic
actuators. The shift from hydraulic to electric actuators took place in the 1970’s,
when the electronic components needed to govern a robot reached the full tech-
nical maturity. As a matter of fact, microprocessors and other components
started to be widely used at that time: this allowed the robot manufacturers to
dispose of powerful and cost-effective devices which could be employed to im-
plement control systems able to deal with a complex and computationally ex-
pensive task such as the control of a robot.
The economic and geopolitical situation, at the international level, also pushed
the trend towards electrically driven robots: for instance, the price of crude oil
suddenly grew after the oil crisis following the Kippur war (October 1973). The
companies were thus forced to find more efficient ways of production: robot
(and in particular electrically driven robots) was consistent with the goals of re-
ducing the costs and increasing the productivity. This gave a boost to the instal-
lations of industrial robots, which increased more than 30% per year in the
second half of the 1970’s (Karlsson, 1991).
From the scientific point of view, a significant base for the development of
electrically driven robots was the merit of Victor Scheinman (Scheinman, 1973).
Scheinman was a mechanical engineering student at Stanford University who in
1969 designed and built the famous Stanford Arm (Figure 3). This robot was the
first prototype of a robot actuated by electric motors (6 DC motors) and con-
trolled by a PDP-6 microprocessor. The Stanford Arm had 5 revolute and one
prismatic joint, for a total of 6 DOFs, and its kinematic chain was made of har-
monic drives and spur gear reducers. Its inverse kinematics could be analytically
solved in a closed form, which allowed a fast trajectory execution. Moreover,
some sensors (tachometers and potentiometers) were mounted on the robot, in
order to measure position and velocity of the robot joints.
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10.4236/cm.2019.81002 29 Advances in Historical Studies
Figure 3. The Stanford Arm.
Four years later (1973), Scheinman designed another electrical robot, named
Vicarm, that was smaller and lighter than the industrial robots of that time. This
made Vicarm particularly suitable for use in tasks, such as assembly of parts,
where the robot was not required to lift and carry heavy loads. These features of
Vicarm were so appreciated, that Unimation bought the company that produced
Vicarm and exploited its know-how to design and manufacture (in 1978) the
famous PUMA robot (Figure 4).
The PUMA (an acronym for Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly)
was considered for many decades the archetype of the anthropomorphic robots,
and its kinematics is still taken as an example in several robotic books at the un-
dergraduate as well at the graduate level.
In the meanwhile, other companies developed and manufactured other types
of industrial robots. For instance, KUKA developed in 1973 the Famulus robot,
whose name in Latin means “servant”. In 1974 Cincinnati Milacron, a major
machine tool manufacturer, developed a robot called T3 (an acronym for “The
Tomorrow Tool”), which was installed in several automotive plants, and espe-
cially in the Volvo plants in Sweden. T3 was the first commercially available mi-
nicomputer-controlled industrial robot (Figure 5).
In 1974, the Swedish company ASEA (now ABB) started the production of the
robots of the famous and successful IRB series, well known worldwide also for
their typical orange color. The first robot of this series, that was issued for more
than 20 years, was the IRB-6, which was largely employed in productive sites for
complex tasks (machining, arc-welding), for its ability to move smoothly along
continuous paths (Figure 6).
In the same year, the Japanese company Hitachi developed the robot
HI-T-HAND Expert, that is relevant in the history of industrial robotics for the
precision it reached in insertion operations (it could insert mechanical parts
with a clearance of about 10 micrometers). It was also provided with a force
feed-back control system and a flexible wrist mechanism.
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4. The Third Generation of Industrial Robots (1978-1999)
The industrial robots of the third generation (conventionally ranging from 1978
to 1999) were characterized by a larger extent of interaction with both the oper-
ator and the environment, through some kind of complex interfaces (such as vi-
sion or voice). They also had some self-programming capabilities, and could re-
program themselves, although by a little amount, in order to execute different
tasks (Zamalloa, 2017). These robots were provided with servo controls, and
could execute complex tasks, by moving either from point to point or along con-
tinuous paths. They could be programmed either on-line (the operator could use
a teach box with a keyboard) or off-line, being connected to a PLC or a PC, which
allowed to use a high-level language for motion programming and enabled the
robots to be interfaced with a CAD or a database. The possibility of high-level,
off-line programming enlarged the operational potential of the robots: for
in-stance, they could elaborate data from sensor reading, in order to adjust the
robot movements taking into account changes in the environment (e.g. changes
inposition and orientation of the workpieces). Moreover, the diagnostic capabil-
ities could be greatly enhanced: these robots could produce not only an indica-
tion of failure detection, but also a report on the location and on the type of the
failure. In addition, some sort of “intelligence” was present in the robots of the
third generation, with some (although limited) adaptive capabilities. These ca-
pabilities could be employed in some more complex tasks (such as tactile inspec-
tion, assembly operations, arc welding), by using the data coming from vision or
perception systems to locate the objects and the workpieces and guide the joint
movements according to the task to be performed, taking into account the pos-
sibility of small changes in the position of the objects.
Between the end of the 1970’s and the beginning of the 1980’s, other scientific
and technical improvements contributed to the diffusion of robots.
In 1978, a novel kinematic structure was proposed by the Japanese scientist
Hiroshi Makino from Yamanashi University. Such a structure was made of three
revolute joints with parallel axes and a prismatic joint lying at the end of the ki-
nematic chain (Figure 7). The robot with this structure was named SCARA (an
acronym from “Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm”), since its compliance
in the horizontal direction resulted lower than the compliance in the vertical di-
rection. For this reason, as well as for the lightness of the kinematic chain (that al-
lowed a simpler and faster controller), this robot was suitable to be employed in
tasks such as the assembly of small objects (Makino & Furuya, 1980).
Another relevant technical improvement in industrial robotics was the ap-
pearance of direct drive actuated robot. The first prototype of this kind was the
CMU Direct Drive Arm (Asada & Kanade, 1983), developed in 1981 by Kanade
and Asaka at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA). This kind of robot
featured higher accuracy and faster operations because the motors connected
directly to the arms eliminating the need for intermediate gear or chain systems.
Both the aforementioned findings were employed in the AdeptOne (Figure
8), the first commercially available direct-driven SCARA robot (1984).
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10.4236/cm.2019.81002 32 Advances in Historical Studies
Figure 7. One of the first prototypes of SCARA robot, designed by Hiroshi Makino.
Figure 8. Examples of AdeptOne SCARA robots.
These scientific and technical findings contributed to the diffusion of robots
in applications different from those in the classical automotive sector, in partic-
ular in the production of consumer goods, especially those in the electronic
market. SCARA robots were employed in these types of assembly lines, especial-
ly in Japan. For this reason, Japan became in the 1980’s not only the world leader
in robot manufacturing (with more than 40 companies that built and sold robots
worldwide), but also in the production of electronic consumer goods.
Robotics in the 1980’s was a rising star, not only in Japan but in all the devel-
oped countries. It appeared as a promising field that drew the interest of jour-
nalist, scientists, policy makers and also common people.
From the scientific and technical point of view, this is the time when the ro-
bots became even more versatile, by exploiting important improvements both
with respect to the hardware and the software. Concerning the former aspect,
robots started to be provided with advanced sensors (e.g. cameras, force sensors,
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laser scanners); concerning the latter aspects, the control software became more
“intelligent” by introducing come techniques related to Artificial Intelligence.
Both these aspects increased the versatility and the flexibility of the robots,
which could be employed in more and more complex tasks.
Despite the significant progress undergone in the 1980’s, the need for robots
that could carry out task at high speed pushed the scientific research to design
innovative kinematic structures. The idea of employing parallel kinematic chains
instead of the classical serial kinematic chains was put forward and led to a type
of lightweight robot featuring the capability of moving at high speed. The arche-
type of this kind of robots was the Delta robot (that appeared in 1992), conceived
by the Swiss scientist Reymond Clavel at the Ecole Poly-technique Fédérale de
Lausanne (EPFL). This type of robot, designed by Clavel in his PhD thesis, had
three translational DOFs and one rotational DOF (Clavel, 1991). With respect to
serial robots, parallel robots featured a smaller work-space, but the capability of
operating at much higher speed. The kinematic architecture of the Delta robot
was copied in many parallel manipulators, devoted to high speed pick-and-place
operations.
The first application of Delta robots was developed by the Swiss company
Demaurex in 1992: six Delta robots were operating inside a work cell for loading
pretzels into trays (Figure 9). Some years afterwards (1998) ABB developed the
Flex-Picker, the world’s fastest picking robot, based on the structure of the Delta
robot (Figure 10).
In this decade, the first attempts to synchronize robots took place: in 1994
Motoman developed MRC, the first robot control system which provided the
synchronized control of two robots (up to 21 axes).
The end of the third generation is conventionally set to the end of the century;
beginning from the year 2000, the industrial robots are considered to belong to
the fourth generation (which extends up to the current days). Such robots fea-
ture high-level “intelligent” capabilities (such as performing advanced computa-
tions, logical reasoning, deep learning, complex strategies, collaborative beha-
vior).
Figure 9. Delta robots in the Demaurex work cells for the packaging of pretzels.
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10.4236/cm.2019.81002 34 Advances in Historical Studies
Figure 10. The ABB Flex-Pitcher robot.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, a brief history of industrial robotics in the 20th century was pre-
sented. The evolution of the industrial robots was conventionally categorized
into four generations, of which the first three cover the timespan from the 1950’s
to the end of the century.
In this historical sketch, not only the scientific and technical evolution was
taken into account, but some considerations about the economic and geopoliti-
cal issues that determined the diffusion of industrial robots, were also done.
The evolution of industrial robotics is not over, but is still developing in the
current days: innovative ideas and novel hardware devices, together with some
new programming techniques connected with Artificial Intelligence, are revolu-
tionizing the concept of industrial automation and giving a new youth to the
factory environment.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this pa-
per.
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