INSIDER | COLUMN
The Fourth Law of Robotics (or The Robots Are Staying)
Duc Pham | School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Birmingham
W
hen I began my academic career as a lecturer in robotics and control engineering at the University of Birmingham, the BBC had just screened a Horizon film
titled ‘The Robots Are Coming’ about the increasing use of robots in industry; British Leyland was still setting up Britain’s first robotic car production line at Longbridge to manufacture the Austin Mini Metro; the Science Research Council, the predecessor of the current day Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council which supports research in engineering and the physical sciences in the UK, was about to launch its first robotics initiative; in other words, the country was being gripped by robotics fever.
However, robots were not a new phenomenon, the word ‘robot’ having been introduced in the early 1920s to the English language by the science fiction play ‘R.U.R.’ (which stands for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’) written by the Czech author Karel Čapek. Then, there were also robot stories by Isaac Asimov in the 1940s that were later published as the famous ‘I, Robot’ collection. The Unimate, the first industrial robot, was developed in the late 1950s. It was installed at General Motors in 1961 to handle die castings. It weighed two tons and cost US$65,000 to make, although reportedly was sold for only US$18,000.
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47 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.1
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