bodies [54。7]。 Soon, many other companies started to develop and manufacture industrial robots in many industrial nations; an innovation-driven industry was born [54。8]。 The first International Symposium on In- dustrial Robotics (now ISR) took place in Chicago in 1970 and proved that robotics had become the field of activity of a vibrant research community。

The breakthrough Stanford Arm  was designed   as a research prototype in 1969 by Victor Scheinman (Chap。  4)。  The  six-degree-of-freedom  (6-DOF)   all-

Fig。54。1a,b  The invention of the industrial robot。 (a) This patent was the start of a joint effort between G。 Devol and

J。 Engelberger to form the first robot company, Unimation, a fusion of the terms universal and automation。 The company was acquired by Westinghouse in the late 1980s and subsequently taken up by Stäubli in 1988。 (b) The first Unimation performed a rather simple handling task in 1961 at a General Motors plant; other car manufacturers followed (courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington DC)

Fig。54。2a,b The all-electric (a) IRB-6 and (b) a SCARA-type kinematic。 (a) First introduced in 1973, the IRB-6 has been a breakthrough development as it was the first serially produced robot product, which combined all-electric-drives technology and a microcomputer for motion control and programming。 The robot proved very robust, and life-times of more than 25 years in harsh productions were reported (courtesy of ABB Automation)。 (b) The selective compliance assembly robot arm (SCARA) is particularly suited for assembly tasks as it combines rigidity in the vertical axis and compliance in the horizontal axis。 In 1978, the first Hirata AR-300 was put together。 Depicted is the successor design, the AR-i350 (courtesy of HIRATA Robotics, Mainz)

Fig。54。3a,b The KUKA IR 601/60 (a) and the Unimation PUMA (programmable universal machine for assembly) 560 (b)。 (a) In 1978, the novel 6 DOF KUKA robot fea- tured a parallel linkage for its second and third axes。 At almost two tons of own weight, it could handle payloads of some 60 kg at maximum operating speed。 The robot quickly became a workhorse for the automotive  industry。

(b) The six axis PUMA was inspired by the dexterity of a human arm。 After its launch in 1979 by Unimation, it became one of the most popular arms and was used,  due to its versatility and ease of use, as a reference in robotics research for many years

electric manipulator was controlled by a state-of-the-art computer of the time, a DEC PDP-6。 The nonanthro- pomorphic kinematic configuration with one prismatic and five rotational joints was configured such that the equations for solving the robot kinematics were simple enough to speed up computations。 Drives consisted of direct-current (DC) electric motors, harmonic drive and spur gear reducers, potentiometers and tachometers for position and velocity feedback [54。9]。 Subsequent robot designs were strongly influenced by Scheinman’s con- cepts (Figs。 54。2 and 54。3)。

In 1973, the company ASEA (now ABB) intro- duced the first microcomputer-controlled all-electric industrial robot, the IRB-6, which allowed continuous path motion (CP), a precondition for many applications such as arc welding or material removal (Fig。 54。2)。 In the 1970s, intense diffusion of robots into car manu- facturing set in mostly for (spot-)welding and handling applications (Fig。 54。3) [54。10]。

In 1978, the selective compliance assembly robot arm (SCARA) was invented by Makino of Yamanashi University, Japan [54。11]。 The ground-breaking four- axis low-cost design was perfectly suited for small parts assembly as the kinematic configuration allows fast and compliant arm motion (Fig。 54。4)。 Flexible assembly systems based on the SCARA robot in conjunction with compatible product designs (DFA) have contributed sig- nificantly to creating a boom in high-volume electron- ics production and consumer products [54。12]。 Further optimization of robot dynamics and  accuracy  led to the first direct-drive SCARA robot, the AdeptOne in 1984 [54。13]。