Robots has made deep in-roads into our life. As a result, they find wide range of applications:
- Industrial Application
Amongst all type of applications, industrial application is a much more mature application for robotics and by far the most market-driven. The majority of the robots deployed worldwide are of this type. Some of them are described below:
- Welding
Perhaps the most popular applications of robots is in industrial welding. As a matter of fact, it commands about 20% of industrial robot applications. The repeatability, uniformity quality, and speed of robotic welding is unmatched.
A major user of robotic spot welders has been the automotive industry. Chrysler Motor Corporation's plants had a robot population of 900,670 in the year 1985 which were exclusively used for spot welding.This figure rose to 2,350 in 1990.
- Spray Painting Applications
Spray painting is another popular robot application which exults its efficient use.. The consistency and repeatability of a robot's motion have enabled near perfect quality while at the same time preventing wastage of paint. It also relieves the human operator from a hazardous job without compromising on work quality, uniformity and costs.
- Assembly Operations
The high level of repeatability in robots makes it most suitable for assembly tasks provided that proper planning and design have been done. It has also allowed the development of some new technologies in the field of electronic assembly.
- Palletizing and Material Handling
Palletizing is the act of loading or unloading material onto pallets. The newspaper industry has been particularly hard hit by increased labor costs. Robots came to their rescue. Cincinnati Milacron Robot was used to palletize advertising inserts for a newspaper.
Many companies in the United States and Canada have been forced to close in such areas as die casting and injection molding because they could not compete with foreign firms. The introduction of robotics into this process has allowed the same companies to remain viable.
In industries, some processes demands a cleaner environment e.g. semiconductor industry. Here, chip manufacturig facilities and various processses take place within a clean room. This requires that personnel as well as robots do not introduce dirt, dust, or oil into the area. Since robots do not breath, sneeze, or have dandruff, they are especially suited to the clean room environment demanded by the semiconductor industry.
- Personal and Service Robotics Application
The focus of this application is for the robots to perform a service function with a human (or a group of humans) and in the public space. Among the examples of this application are those robots used for learning, education, and entertainment, house keeping, office automation, and aids for physically challenged individuals.
- Space Applications of Robotics
These are generally divided into two areas:
- robotic manipulators – such devices are proposed for deployment in space or on planetary surfaces to emulate human manipulation capabilities; they may be deployed on free-flyer spacecraft or on-orbit servicing of other spacecraft, within space vehicles for payload tending, or on planetary landers or rovers for the acquisition of samples;
- robotic rovers – such devices are proposed for deployment on planetary surfaces to emulate human mobility capabilities; they are typically deployed on the surfaces of terrestrial planets, small bodies of the solar system, planetary atmospheres (aerobots), or for penetration of ice layers (cryobots) or liquid layers (hydrobots).
- Application of robotics in surgery
A robot, more than anything else, is a highly precise computer-controlled positioning device that lends itself well to applications where positioning accuracy is required. This includes many surgical procedures in orthopaedics, neurosurgery, minimal invasive (laparoscopic) surgery, and cardiology. But the application of robotic-related technology as a technological field goes well beyond the robot holding the knife. Robotics provides the underlying technologies for augmented reality systems to allow surgeons to prepare or train operations on simulators, which, like flight simulators for pilots, should provide the sensation of reality. Haptics in end effectors can provide the sensation of contact with different types of material; the handling of soft tissue, especially where navigation systems are used, represents a major challenge, but is one in which real-time robotic tracking and new generation image guidance systems can play a role. Since bone provides a rigid material, needless to say orthopaedic surgery has provided early applications. Many knee and hip replacements have been conducted using a robot. Robots also provide adaptive fixators for computer assisted fracture deformity correction: master-slave manipulators can reduce tremor and be incorporated into a wide range of medical equipment. The application possibilities are enormous.
Surgery has always been an area of medicine in which technology has played a key role. The application of robotics to surgery is revolutionising new developments in medical equipment to make equipment and therapies more adaptive to human responses.
- Application of robotics in security & surveillance
- It is used for moving object detection, in which robot will turn toward the object, which is then tracked onscreen, even in darkness.
- It is used as instant camera zoom to a point one click or program view into the its regular route for snapshotting and later review.
- An automated response system can send the robot immediately to a point of intrusion for verification, from user’s integrated alarm system.
- Optionally, it can be used for detection of smoke, water, heat and other hazards.
Thus, as it is apparent, days are not far when robots will be found in household of everyone and they will be as common as TV.
