Introducing Carnegie-Mellon University’s Robotics Institute (Research in Progress)

Carnegie-Mellon University has established a Robotics Institute to bring its expertise in Engineering, Science, and Industrial Administration to bear upon the problem of national industrial productivity The Institute has been established to undertake advanced research and development in seeing, thinking robots and intelligent systems, and to facilitate transfer of this technology to industry The Institute is engaged in broad programs of research in robotics, artificial intelligence, manufacturing technology, micro-electronics technology, and computer science. The Institute offers the promise of dramatic advances that will not only improve the productivity of all types of employees but also lead to improvements in the “quality of life” for all A demonstrated need for research and development in the field of robotics, intelligent systems, and programmable automation exists today in the United States As long ago as the 1960’s experts predicted that the most explosive growth area during the next decade would be in computer-based automation of the manufacturing process. All steps of manufacturing -design, prototyping, production engineering, part forming, assembly inspection, material transfer and storage -were expected to become directly controlled by computers. Furthermore, computer control would bring a new flexibility to automation; the machines that perform manufacturing operations would be programmable, allowing one machine to perform a variety ol manufacturing steps. This capability, combined with the complete computer-based scheduling and allocation of resources, would result in a major increase in manufacturing productivity, especially in the important area of batch production and job shop operations. A variety of forces, including economic pressures, human productivity limitations, advances in basic technologies, increased complexity of design, and broadening foreign competition, provide the impetus for the development of computer-based manufacturing, yet few of the past decade’s expectations have been fulfilled Even in the production sequence the use of industrial robotic manipulator arms is so expensive in the U S. that most robotic tasks either serve only as human enhancement or fbr human protection. In contrast, many major Japanese companies are now pursuing specialized robotic devices for their present or future needs, and are actively developing completely automated self-contained factories to be sold to developing countries. The major problem in the development of robotic and