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What makes robots work? There are two main systems:
1) "Numerical Control" is a method of programming commands into our robot:
punched card or paper tape was the first media, computerised systems are
the latest.
2)Teleoperation is another; at it's simplest this involves a human
carrying out an action which is duplicated by a machine. Think of Homer
Simpson making a mechanical arm pick up a piece of plutonium from the
reactor!
A modern industrial robot can be looked upon as using both of these
principles. Tele-operator technology tells the robot what to do; numerical
(ie digital) control tells it how and when to do it. The first known
productively working robot is believed to be a device for unloading
die-cast parts from an assembly system; they have come a long way since
then!
We may have been content with a simple definition of the term 'robot' in
the 1960s but times have now moved on and we now expect our machine to be
a multi-talented machine capable of being programmed to carry out a large
variety of tasks with a very high degree of accuracy. Generally these
tasks are fairly simple but this is governed only by the ability of the
programmers to control the devices. a popular type of programming is
called "lead-through" and in this system the necessary actions are carried
out or simulated by a human operator and the necessary movements are
imprinted onto the robot's memory. Alternatively a purpose-written
computer programme can be used to input the necessary commands - a far
more versatile but also more complex method.
The most important application of robotics today is in carrying out
repeated, precise tasks in manufacturing. There are three basic task
types: fixed, programmable and variable automation. Fixed automation is a
regular sequence of actions which produce certain products in large
numbers to a high degree of uniformity; programmable automation is
suitable for producing smaller numbers of particular products in batches,
after which the robot can be re-programmed to produce a different product
or the same one to a different specification. Variable automation allows a
robot to produce more than one product on each cycle and is therefore more
suited to smaller scale manufacture since only a small number, perhaps
only a single item, of each individual product is manufactured at a time
before the programme moved the robot onto a different product.
In many industrial applications, of course, the borderlines between these
task types can become extremely blurred.
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