Robotics Move From Industry To Space To Elder Care
Published: Jan 25, 2009Retirement isn’t coming easy to 83-year-old Joseph Engelberger, widely known as the Father of Robotics. “There’s a lot that can still be done,” he says wistfully, despite already accomplishing so much in the robotic field. In fact, Engelberger and George Devol produced Unimate, the first industrial robot.
While studying for his MS degree at Columbia University, Engelberger worked for Manning Maxwell & Moore as a physicist designing control systems for nuclear power plants and jet engines. At a cocktail party, he met Devol.
“We had lunch together and he told me about the patent he’d just gotten for a programmable manipulator. I said, ‘Gee, that sounds like a robot,’ and soon convinced my company to take a license on it. That was a happy circumstance. Soon I was the leader of a new industry.”
When changes came to the company, Engelberger raised funds to buy its aerospace division and the robotic license. In 1956, he and Devol founded Unimation Inc., the world’s first robotics company. Engelberger used his knowledge from heading the aerospace division to build Unimate, the first robot, and installed it in a General Motors die casting operation in Ternstedt, N.J., in 1961. The automotive industry was forever changed.
“Robots were flexible,” said Engelberger. “They could be reprogrammed to work on the next model car. It made automation much more practical and saved money for the producers.” Later, Engelberger advised Congress how automation could be used in space exploration and consulted for NASA on all robotics-related projects.
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