ABSTRACT
The Robot Industries Association (RIA) has defined an industrial robot as “a reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools or specialized devices, through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.” The most common types of manipulators may be modeled as an open kinematic chain of rigid bodies called links, interconnected by joints. A more general definition of a robot is: a general-purpose, reprogrammable machine capable of processing certain humanlike characteristics such as judgment, reasoning, learning, and vision. Although industrial robots have been successfully used in a variety of manufacturing applications, most robots used are deaf, dumb, blind, and stationary. In the manufacturing industry, the term automation is very common. It was introduced in the 1940s at the Ford Motor Company, where specialized machines helped manufacture high-volume production of mechanical and electrical parts. However, the high cost of tooling for new models limits production flexibility.
