Robotics Technology Abstracts

Introduces designers to hardware and software tools necessary for planning, laying out, and building advanced robot-based manufacturing cells surveying the available technology for creating innovative machines suitable to individual needs. Considers assembly system simulation, task-oriented programm

Robotics Sourcebook provides concise, up-to-date definitions of the terms, acronyms, and abbreviations currently used in robotics. It covers industrial robots, smart robots, and military robots, as well as machine vision, laser systems, CAD/CAM/CIM, advanced manufacturing technology, production processes, bar code identification, and factories of the future. It explains how robots work, and it presents key factors in robot implementation, as well as examples of typical applications, from assembly functions and die-casting to foundry, inspection, and forging. It also analyzes the world robotics market and includes forecasts of market trends. Divided into four parts encompassing 12 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the robotics industry and U.S. industrial performance, along with current international competitors and their markets, including Japan, Western Europe, France, Britain, and West Germany. It proceeds with a discussion of technological developments, research and development, standards, international agreements, definitions of terms, and robotics programs such as those of NASA, the National Science Foundation, U.S. Navy Robotics, and the United Kingdom. Also included is extensive reference material that contains points of contact for additional information and a detailed bibliography, plus photographs, charts, and diagrams. This book should be a useful reference source for engineers or professionals working in the field of industrial robotics.

In 1981 Robotics Bibliography was published containing over 1,800 references on industrial robot research and development, culled from the scientific literature over the previous 12 years. It was felt that sensors for use with industrial robots merited a section and accordingly just over 200 papers were included. It is a sign of the increased research into sensors in production engineering that this bibliography on both the contact and non-contact forms has appeared less than three years after that first comprehensive collection of references appeared. In a reviell''; in 1975 Professor Warnecke of IPA, Stuttgart drew attention to the lack of sensors for touch and vision. Since then research workers in various companies, universities and national laboratories in the USA, the UK, Italy, Germany and Japan have concentrated on improving sensor capabilities, particularly utilising vision, artificial intelligence and pattern recognition principles. As a result many research projects are on the brink of commercial exploitation and development. This biblio graphy brings together the documentation on that research and development, highlighting the advances made in vision systems, but not neglecting the development of tactile sensors of various types. No bibliography can ever be comprehensive, but significant contributions from research workers and production engineers from the major industrialised countries over the last 12 years have been included.