Since ASEA presented the first all electric microprocessor-controlled robot in 1974, industrial robotics has advanced beyond all recognition. David Marshall and Christina Bredin look back at ABB's contribution to industrial robots.

Industrial robots are omnipresent in discrete manufacturing across the world: increasing productivity, providing consistent high quality and improving workplace safety. The advancements made during the last 35 years have been significant. Initially, single robots were used for relatively simple and monotonous tasks in hazardous environments. Today, multi-robot synchronized systems are dealing with sophisticated assignments in flexible production cells. ABB has been a prime driver in this rapid development process.

Since ASEA presented the first all electric microprocessor-controlled robot in 1974, industrial robotics has advanced beyond all recognition. ABB has continued its pioneering developments, culminating in today’s comprehensive range of industrial robots, robot controllers and associated software. In the intervening 30-some years, positioning accuracies have improved from 1 mm to 10 microns, user interfaces from a 4-digit LED readout to a full Windows touch-screen display and computing power from 8 kb to 20 GB or more. At the same time, reliability has increased to 80,000 hours MTBF (mean time between failures) and costs have plummeted so that today, the robot price is half in actual terms than it was just 15 years ago. The world of the industrial robot is well past its early dawn.

Courtesy of ABB