The abilities and limitations of today's industrial robots are reviewed and compared to similar human parameters. The robot abilities were determined from a survey of 282 current robot models. This discussion is held within the general framework of a skills analysis approach to robot task...

The working range and speed of a spotwelding robot are dependent on the system for transmission of secondary current to the welding equipment on the robot hand. ASEA has developed a secondary current transmission system which eliminates the disadvantages of cable transmission.

Matsushita leads a number of companies coming into the robots business, while Yamaha installs over 100 arc welding robots, and international ventures increase.

A small manufacturer of press metal fabrications, Tallent Engineering, has invested in advanced manufacturing equipment. It was largely as a result of this that the company won a major order from Ford for safety critical items needed for the new Sierra. Brian Rooks reports.

Ford has invested some £250 million in its manufacturing facility for the new Sierra car. Much of this has been spent at Dagenham in the UK where there is a massive robot complex of 120 machines.

Function‐To‐Function‐Architecture (FFA) is a novel architecture for building programmable electronic systems which uses multiple processors and a unique distributed executive. An FFA system is a set of FFA modules interacting via a communications medium. Every FFA module is a complete...

Sweden is one of the countries most densely populated by industrial robots. In this article, the market growth, the structure of applications, the marketing, and the buyer behaviour are described, and compared to the UK situation. Some future trends are also discussed.

The first industrial robot to be employed by Saunders Valve Company Ltd., manufacturers of diaphragm valves, is a ‘PAM‐2’ robot made by Remek.

The kinetic characteristics of grippers for industrial robots are studied. Determination of the input‐output force of grippers and calculations of gripping force for different combinations of gripper's posture and workpiece orientation are included.

An ambitious proposal to develop a prototype robot software system, including standards for data and languages, has come from an Interest Group of CAM‐I based in Japan. If adopted by the organisation as a whole the proposal could become the basis of an influential international project.