TITLE:
A Brief History of Industrial Robotics in the 20th Century
AUTHORS:
A. Gasparetto, L. Scalera
KEYWORDS:
Industrial Robots, History, Unimate, Stanford Arm, Delta Robot
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.8 No.1,
February
15,
2019
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 forward. 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 mentioned, together with a description of
the most representative industrial robots that were designed and manufactured
in those decades.