The use of robotics in industrial applications can be traced back to 1937 when Griffith Bill P. Taylor engineered a robot that was powered by a single electric motor. Following patterns on punched paper tapes, the robot could be pre-programmed to perform repetitive tasks such as stacking wooden blocks.
Fast forward 80 years to today, Bill’s innovation has evolved into a sine qua non of the modern manufacturing landscape. A robot’s ability to relieve humans from monotonous and laborious tasks such as material transport, lifting of heavy objects or assembly line work has helped to alleviate human resource shortages in various industries across the globe. This delegation of menial tasks to robots has also allowed human workers to take on more complex responsibilities in the factory.
Robots have also come a long way since the days of punched paper tapes and single motors. Equipped with sensors that can detect and process the ubiquitous amount of data available today, modern-day robots are no more limited to playing mundane support roles. The progress of robotics and other advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) has instilled a sense of ‘humanfree’ proactiveness that has transformed the way we work in the factory.
THE DATA 2.5 QUINTILLION BYTES OF IT
According to the World Economic Forum, the world produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day and 90 percent of data today was produced in the last two years.
Naturally, much of this data is generated and collected on the factory floor. The challenge for many factory managers is to make use of the right data to drive efficiency, enhance production and improve on flexibility. The key to this may be with the robots working in the production line itself.
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