Globalisation and fast growing 

Technology developments increasingly influences automation in

industry. It plays an important role in the global economy and in our daily lives. The most effective
and visible part of modern Industrial Automation is the Industrial robotics. Fully automated process
control Robotshave contributed greatly to improve the productivity of virtually
all manufacturingindustries throughout the world. The primary objective of this site is to recommend
industry standard and the best selected books from amazon for the beginners to experts and to give
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To add more value, we also included robots and latest automation galleries, news, related videos and
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Different levels of complexity in tasks for robots

Robotic applications can be broken down into four different levels of complexity depending on the

amount of sensing and decision making required. The applications that fall into the first category are

the easiest to automate and those in the fourth category the most difficult and in many cases not

possible with current technology.

Level 1 

Applications that can be achieved using a simple Robot using jigs and fixtures to position

components and tooling to achieve the required accuracy. Example applications include spot welding,

adhesive or sealant application, painting etc. In order for these to work the variation of the

components along with the repeatability of the robot used must be within the tolerance required by

the process.

Level 2 

Applications requiring sensory feedback in order for small modifications to be made to the program

to account for variation in the components. Examples for this include arc welding, automotive

window glazing and spare wheel mounting. For arc welding the accuracy with which thick section

metal sheet can be cut and formed lies outside of the tolerance in torch position for quality arc

welding. To overcome this Sensors are often used to locate the position of joints and seam tracking

devices which can use either vision systems or through arc sensing are used to track the seam once

it has been located. Seam tracking is essential for most applications of arc welding as the localised

heating caused by the process tends to cause the component to warp.

 Level 3 

These applications require more complex sensory capabilities such as pattern recognition. They also

tend to require complex decision making based on this feed back. Examples where this level of

application has been automated are few and tend to be in the assembly area. A number of systems

now exist for mounting wheels onto car bodies. This requires the robot to find out where the wheel

hub is and in what orientation it is such that the holes in the wheel can be matched to the studs. It

then needs to work out the orientation of the wheel in the rack and calculate how to pick it up so

that it can place it accurately onto the hub. It then runs the wheel nuts onto the studs to the correct

torque level.

Level 4 

The most difficult applications are those involving unpredictable behaviour of either the components

or other equipment within the cell. Operations such as handling of flexible components i.e. carpets or

water hoses for example are examples of this. In the future Robots may also link more intelligently

with humans so that they can judge for themselves when it is safe to operate without having

comprehensive guarding and safety interlocks everywhere. Some robots are already being developed

for the nuclear industry that have tactile sensors covering the arm such that collisions can be

detected before any damage is caused.

Automation Robot
RobotWorx is able to integrate any industrial automation robot for customer
needs.

RobotWorx provides affordable industrial robot automation at reasonable

prices that will get your company into production faster with as little costs as
possible.

Our industrial automation solutions allow our customers to:

 Improve workplace safety

 Reduce costs
 Increase productivity and throughput
 Improve product quality
 Add flexibility 
  Achieve a substantial return on investment

 An industrial robot is defined by ISO[1] as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable,

multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes. The field of robotics may be more
practically defined as the study, design and use of robot systems for manufacturing (a top-level
definition relying on the prior definition of robot).

 Typical applications of robots include welding, painting, assembly, pick and

place, packaging and palletizing, product inspection, and testing, all accomplished with high
endurance, speed, and precision.

History:

George Devol applied for the first robotics patents in 1954 (granted in 1961). The first company to
produce a robot was Unimation, founded by Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger in 1956, and was based on
Devol's original patents. Unimation robots were also called programmable transfer machines since their
main use at first was to transfer objects from one point to another, less than a dozen feet or so apart.
They used hydraulic actuators and were programmed in joint  coordinates, i.e. the angles of the various
joints were stored during a teaching phase and replayed in operation. They were accurate to within
1/10,000 of an inch (note: although accuracy is not an appropriate measure for robots, usually evaluated
in terms of repeatability - see later). Unimation later licensed their technology to Kawasaki Heavy
Industries and Guest-Nettlefolds, manufacturing Unimates in Japan and England respectively. For some
time Unimation's only competitor was Cincinnati Milacron Inc. of Ohio. This changed radically in the late
1970s when several big Japanese conglomerates began producing similar industrial robots.

In 1969 Victor Scheinman at Stanford University invented the Stanford arm, an all-electric, 6-axis

articulated robot designed to permit an arm solution. This allowed it accurately to follow arbitrary paths in
space and widened the potential use of the robot to more sophisticated applications such as assembly
and welding. Scheinman then designed a second arm for the MIT AI Lab, called the "MIT arm."
Scheinman, after receiving a fellowship from Unimation to develop his designs, sold those designs to
Unimation who further developed them with support fromGeneral Motors and later marketed it as
the Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly (PUMA).

Industrial robotics took off quite quickly in Europe, with both ABB Robotics and KUKA Robotics bringing
robots to the market in 1973. ABB Robotics (formerly ASEA) introduced IRB 6, among the world's
first commercially available all electric micro-processor controlled robot. The first two IRB 6 robots were
sold to Magnusson in Sweden for grinding and polishing pipe bends and were installed in production in
January 1974. Also in 1973 KUKA Robotics built its first robot, known as FAMULUS[2], also one of the first
articulated robot to have six electromechanically driven axes.

Interest in robotics increased in the late 1970s and many US companies entered the field, including large
firms like General Electric, and General Motors (which formed joint venture FANUC Roboticswith FANUC
LTD of Japan). U.S. startup companies included Automatix and Adept Technology, Inc. At the height of
the robot boom in 1984, Unimation was acquired by Westinghouse Electric Corporation for 107 million
U.S. dollars. Westinghouse sold Unimation to Stäubli Faverges SCA of France in 1988, which is still
making articulated robots for general industrial and cleanroomapplications and even bought the robotic
division of Bosch in late 2004.

Robot Companies
List of some of the largest robot companies, measured on number of installed robots worldwide [5]:

Manufacturer Robots

Motoman 220.000

Fanuc 220.000

ABB 190.000

KUKA 80.000

Adept 30.000

Nachi 25.000

Linking robots intelligently to other machines

The key to performing the more complex tasks with a Robot is linking it intelligently to other
machines for sequence control and Sensors so that it can react sensibly to variations in either the

components or the environment. In order to achieve this robot controllers have a range of different

communication ports which are either provided as standard or are options. In designing a robot cell

the types and number of communication channels required to perform the sequence control and

ensure that parts, materials etc. are available will need to be calculated. The number required for

even a simple task can quickly rise above the number of channels provided as standard with most

controllers. Some system builders prefer to use a PLC to handle the communications and limit the

number of channels used by the robot to a minimum this also reduces the complexity of the robot

program but obviously adds cost to the system and requires a program for the PLC. All types of

communication ports are available for robot controllers and are used for varying applications.

Binary signals 

These are simple on/off signals represented by two different voltage levels. They can be used as

inputs for simple micro switches to indicate that a component is loaded correctly or as outputs to fire

relays to switch ancillary equipment on and off. They can also be used in a group to pass numbers in

binary format between machines.

Analogue signals 

For applications such as temperature measurement using a thermocouple or distance measurement

using a proximity sensor where a variable voltage is provided by the sensor an analogue input is

required. The robot controller can then convert the voltage which must lie within an allowable range

into a number which can be used to modify the Robots actions. Analogue outputs are also available

and convert a number within the robot controller into a voltage within a specified range. This voltage

can then be fed to an amplifier or used directly to drive electric motors, arc welding Power supplies

etc.

Serial or Parallel Interfaces 

Just as personal computers can link to peripheral equipment such as disk drives, printers etc. using

standard parallel or serial ports so too can robots. These are used for program development and

storage mainly but can also be used from within a robot program for producing reports on the work

performed or interfacing to complex sensors such as vision systems for pattern recognition.

Networks 

Networks are becoming more popular for linking together computer systems and these are available

for robots. One of the first networks available for robots was MAP but apart from within a few

companies, this has not been widely used due to its cost. Some robots are now also available with
 ethernet connections and although not widely used at the moment for robots this is used very widely

throughout industry for CAD etc.

Specialist Interfaces 

Applications such as arc welding require a large number of analogue and digital signals in order to

control the welding power supply and filler wire feed drives. These are often available as standard

sets from the robot vendors with specialist instructions within the robot Programming language to

control them in an application specific manner.

When selecting a Robot for a particular task a number of decisions have to be made. The first of these
is the structure of the robot required. There are a number of different structures commonly available
and each has its own set of limitations and benefits.

Jointed Arm 
The jointed arm robot closely resembles the human arm. This structure is very flexible and has the
ability to reach over obstructions. It can generally achieve any position and orientation within the
working envelope in eight different ways. This can cause control problems. When driving
these Robots in their natural co-ordinate system (joint space) the motion of the robot from one point
to another can be difficult to visualise as the robot will move each joint through the minimum angle
required. This means that the motion of the tool will not be a straight line. This structure of robots is
used for a wide range of applications including paint spraying, arc and spot welding, machine tending,
fettling, etc.

Scara (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arms) 

SCARA robots are specifically designed for peg board type assembly and are heavily used in the
electronics industry. They are very stiff in the vertical direction but have a degree of compliance in the
horizontal plane that enables minor errors in placement of components to be accounted for. These
robots tend to be fairly small and capable of operating very accurately and at high speed. They are
used for assembly, palletisation and machine loading.

Tricept and Hexapod Robots 

Tricept and hexapod robots use linear motors to control the position of the tool. The tricept uses three
of these legs in conjunction with a central pillar to hold the head rigidly in position and then has a
standard wrist mounted on it to achieve the orientation. A hexapod uses six legs and achieves both
position and orientation using them. Both of these structures give very rigid robots but both have the
disadvantage of small working envelopes and limited orientation ability. These structures tend to be
used for machining operations where machine tool level tolerances are not required but greater
flexibility is.
Modern robots are driven by brushless AC servo motors

Almost all modern Robots are driven by brushless AC servo motors but many of the robots existing

in industry use other drives.

Pneumatics 

Many of the simple pick and place arms are driven by pneumatics. This makes them cheap but has

the disadvantage of being difficult to control. Pneumatics are still used with a number of modern

robots to drive end effectors.

Hydraulics 

Hydraulic drives were used on a large number of the early robots as it was more rigid and

controllable than pneumatics and it could provide more power than the electric drives then available.

The problems with hydraulics are that it tends to be fairly slow in operation and that due to the high

pressures involved leaks can be very messy.

Electric 

There are three major types of electric drive that have been used for robots. Stepper Motors These

are used mainly for simple pick and place mechanisms where cheapness is more important than

power or controllability.

 DC Servos 

For the early electric robots the DC servo drive was used extensively. It gave good power

output with a high degree of control of both speed and position.

 AC Servos 

In recent years the AC servo has taken over from the DC servo as the standard drive. These

modern motors give higher power output and are almost silent in operation. As they have no

brushes they are very reliable and require almost no maintenance in operation.

Modern trends in Industrial Automation, Process Control and

Robotics

Globalisation, growing Technology and their development increasingly influenceAutomation in

industry. And, it plays an important role in the global economy and in our daily lives. The most

effective and visible part of modern Industrialautomation is the industrial robotics. Fully automated

process control Robotshave contributed greatly to improve the productivity of virtually

all manufacturingindustries throughout the world. And, almost all the process monitoring systems

installed as a part of plant or production process are basically Digital Control Systems DCS

connected by digital networks.

Evolution of Automation 

Automation had existed for many years, in the form of simple mechanical devices to automate

simple manufaturing tasks. With the addition of specialised hardwired computer, named as

Programmable Logic Controllers PLC automation became more practical to control almost any

industrial process. PLCs are used to synchronize the flow of inputs from physical Sensors with the

flow of outputs to actuators. Now, Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical

and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and

human activities. The new transactions will define automation very broadly, including applications

such as DNA chip and biological sample handling, agriculture, security, demining, healthcare,

transportation, as well as the myriad of applications related to manufacturing.

Modern Trends 

The purpose of automation has shifted from increasing productivity and reducing costs, to broader

issues, such as increasing safety, quality and flexibility in the manufacturing process. With the help

of DCS and wireless network, and in combination with the self-tuning, self-diagnosing and optimizing

features, it is possible to make both startup activity and operational routines of a complicated

process much easier and more efficient. DCS also offer process modeling and simulation, something

that can improve operator training a great deal.

Design principles of Human Machine Interface Systems In Industrial

automation

The human-machine interface systems, including the development of Roboticsystems and

safety Controls need high level and detailed design Process. It has remarkable correlation with

quality management and Industrial AutomationProcesses. Safty through Design Process is similar to

TQM, ISO 9000 processes. By adopting these high level priniciples, establishing objectives, and
starting at the design stage, the safety of workers and products can be impacted.

What Should Be Automated?

First, Identify types of automation by information acquisition, information analysis, decision & action

selection, and action implementation. After this, Identify levels of automation by applying primary

evaluation criteria, human performance consequences, mental workload, skill degradation. After

arriving initial type and level, apply secondary evaluation criteria through reliablity and costs of

action outcomes.

The Basic Design Priniciples of Industial Robotics

The first and most important engineeing design priniciple is, the automated system must be

predictable and there must be a way to monitor the system. Training, learning and operation of

automated system should be simple. The human operator must be informed, involved and he must

be in command. Also, only automate new functionalities if there is a need.

Preliminary Design

The preliminary design phase of saftey Industrial Automation has the following three important

aspects

 Needs and Task Analysis

 Great Ideas, Story Boards and Demonstrations

 End user and industry based prototype design standards

Detailed Design

Here design tradeoff and workflow analysis plays a crucial role. At this point, documentation and

industry user manual for the detailed design should be prepared. The document should have

information about usablity evalution of prototypes and performance and effectiveness criteria of the

detailed design.

FAA Human Factors Design Standards

 Basic Design Elements : Durability, proper function allocation,user testing,reliability

 Simplicity

 Consistency : Be consistant with user mental model

 Standardization : Maintain identical interfaces for identical functions

 Safety : Provide a fail-safe design and make it error tolerant

 User-centered perspective : Maximize human performance but minimize training

 requirements
 Support

 Maintenance

Apply Design Process For Your Need And Conceptualize It

The design process is often described as an "Imaginative Integration of Information through

Engineering Technology". It avoids poor understandings of problem to be solved, wrong assembly

and manufacturing methods in automation. There five basic steps associated with the process. 1.

Identify The Need, 2. Define the Problem, 3. Gather Information, 4. Conceptualize, 5. Evaluation,

each of which is explained below.

Identify The Need 

The engineer or designer or others involved with design must clearly understand and identify the

need of the Automation or robotics. This involves identification of mechanism to analyze needs, and

highlighting it to find a solution to the identified problem.

Define the Problem 

It requires the engineer or designer to develop a concise problem statement for the design, and

identifying limitations associated with the problem. Here, background investigation of the automation

problem in question, data collection and analysis is a must.

Gather Information 

It involves collecting information from sources such as handbooks,journals,Robotics specifications

and codes, vendor catalogs, patent gazette, technical experts,internet, and so on.

Conceptualize 

We must remember that creativity is a critical ingredient in finding a solution to most automation

and engineering problems. So, preparing specifications for quality testing procedure, and developing

process specification will make the design more conceptual. The manufaturing related issues like

assembly,determining tooling requirements, cost control, purchasing material, and manufaturing

plannings also to be addressed.

Evaluation 

This involves setting up design auditing, evaluating design methods and procedures with internation

quality standards and assuring the quality of the end design. Procedure to evaluate engineering

design functions, research functions, quality assurance functions, manufaturing functions should be

established.