Page 45 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

REVOLUTIONIZING INDUSTRY 25

OTHER SCIENTISTS: GEORGE DEVOL (1920– )

Much of the credit for the development of industrial robots goes
to George Devol, a talented engineer and inventor. Born February
20, 1920, in Louisville, Kentucky, Devol was fascinated by mechani-
cal and electronic engineering. Devol’s first manufacturing efforts
included phonograph arms, amplifiers, and an automatic “people
counter” to tally attendance at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
In 1946, Devol patented a key device for industrial automation. It
was a magnetic recorder that could store the details of mechanical
motion. This meant that once a robot arm and gripper were “taught”
how to perform a task by manually putting it through the motions,
it could then “play back” the task over and over again, such as on an
assembly line. As Devol noted in the patent application: “The pres-
ent invention makes available for the first time a more or less general
purpose machine that has universal application to a vast diversity of
applications where cyclic control is desired.”
In 1954, Devol built upon this principle to patent a robot called
Unimate, short for “Universal Automation.” In 1956, Devol got
together with Joseph Engelberger to form Unimation, the first robot
company. In later years, Devol also did important work in machine
vision and bar-code processing.

Robots on the Assembly Line

In the spring of 1961, the first Unimate robot began operations on
the assembly line at the General Motors Plant in Turnstedt, a suburb
of Trenton, New Jersey. Most of the factory’s 3,000 human workers
welcomed the newcomer. Unimate would be doing a job involving
the casting of car doors and other parts from molten metal—hot,
dangerous work. Steve Holland, chief scientist for manufactur-
ing at General Motors, told U.S. News & World Report in 2003
that robots at first were mainly considered for “the three ‘D’ kinds
of jobs. Jobs that are dirty, difficult, and dangerous.” That first
Unimate worked for nearly 10 years, keeping up tirelessly with three