Page 46 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

26 Modern Robotics

This Unimate robot is used for precision placement of fibers. (Photo compliments
of ADC Acquisition Co.)

shifts of human workers each day. This proven reliability would go a
long way toward convincing industrialists about the value of robots
on the assembly line.
The first industrial robots attracted modest public attention, but
Engelberger found it hard at first to convince American investors
and industrialists that robots were a good investment. By the mid-
1960s, Unimation was demonstrating PUMA, a robot that had a
more humanlike appearance than Unimate. The robot was shown
to television viewers on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
Engelberger recalled in an interview with the Trentonian that “The
robot did a beer commercial and the people loved it. It took over
the whole show. But after that, the only calls I got were from people
who wanted my robot to be the entertainment at the county fair.”
To this day, Engelberger is not impressed by toy robots that do
cute tricks. As he told Red Herring magazine in 2000,