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Industrial robot From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Industrial robotics refers to the study, design and use of robots for manufacturing. Applications for industrial robots include welding, painting, assembly, product inspection and testing. There are a small number of commonly used configurations for industrial automation, including articulated robots (the most common), SCARA robots and gantry robots (a.k.a. Cartesian robots or x-y-z robots). Robot actions are determined by programmed routines that specify the direction, speed, and distance of a series of coordinated motions. For more precise guidance, robots are often assisted by machine vision systems acting as the "eyes". History of Industrial Robotics The first company to produce an industrial robot was Unimation. In most cases, a machine vision system will use a combination of these processing techniques to perform a complete inspection. A system that reads a barcode may also check a surface for scratches and measure the length and width of a machined component. Applications of Machine Vision Machine vision systems are widely used in semiconductor device fabrication; indeed, without machine vision, yields for computer chips would be significantly reduced. Machine vision systems inspect silicon wafers, processor chips, and subcomponents such as resistors and capacitors. In the automotive industry, machine vision systems are used to guide industrial robots, gauge the fit of stamped metal components, and inspect the surface of the painted vehicle for defects. Though machine vision techniques were developed for the visible spectrum, the same processing techniques may be applied to images captured using imagers sensitive to other forms of light such as infrared. Related fields Machine vision is distinct from computer vision, an academic field of research often classified as a subfield of artificial intelligence.
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