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The ANSI/RIA R15.05‐1‐1990 is an American national industrial robotics standard that covers methods for evaluating the point‐to‐point and static performance of industrial robots. This standard introduces many important concepts for carrying out performance tests. These concepts include standard test plane, standard test path, and working space center point. Eight mistakes and two conflict definitions related to working space center point have been identified and corrected in this paper. Most of the mistakes are definition mistakes related to the base coordinate system, working space center point, standard reference plane, and standard test plane. Mistakes also result from the confusion between the reference plane and the test plane.

This paper presents a review of published literature on robot reliability and safety. The literature is classified into three main categories: robot safety; robot reliability; and miscellaneous. Robot safety is further categorized into six classifications: general; accidents; human‐factors; safety standards; safety methods; and safety systems/technologies. The period covered by the review is from 1973 to 2001.

An extremely high stepping‐motor system resolution without costly micro‐step or quarterstep driving is now available with the 400‐steps/rev. 4in OD stepping motor, announced by Sigma.

This work demonstrates the development of a robot, which was designed for the orbital welding of pipes.

The robot consists of a small car pressed against the pipe by means of chains, which are used by the robot to move around it. To provide all necessary torch movements, the robot must have four degrees of freedom: torch travel speed, stick‐out, torch angle and lateral motion. Thus, using a look‐up table‐which was specially designed to this application‐it is possible to follow the optimal parameters (voltage, current, welding speed, torch angle and stick‐out) for each welding position (flat, vertical and overhead).

The robotization of the orbital welding process brings enhancement in the final product quality, considerable increase of repeatability, reduction of rework and reduction of the weld execution time. At the very least, the robot is capable to reproduce the weld bead of the best human welder, through the use of the same paramenters contained in a table.

The use of this robot in welding with GMAW proved to be extremely viable. It was shown that the bead shape did not suffer great variations from one welding postion to another, thanks to the use of a gradual change of parameters.

Although, by RIA definition the devices for the orbital welding shown in literature up to now are not robots, the developed device can be called a robot due to its capability of being completely programmable and automatically carrying through all welding activities.

Whilst robots are of benefit in gas metal arc welding process parameters are the critical factors. Vernon Mangold of Kohol Systems discusses their influence on cell design.

Recent years have seen a technological change, Industry 4.0, in the manufacturing industry. Human–robot cooperation, a new application, is increasing and facilitating collaboration without fences, cages or any kind of separation. The purpose of the paper is to review mainstream academic publications to evaluate the current status of human–robot cooperation and identify potential areas of further research.

A systematic literature review is offered that searches, appraises, synthetizes and analyses relevant works.

The authors report the prevailing status of human–robot collaboration, human factors, complexity/ programming, safety, collision avoidance, instructing the robot system and other aspects of human–robot collaboration.

This paper identifies new directions and potential research in practice of human–robot collaboration, such as measuring the degree of collaboration, integrating human–robot cooperation into teamwork theories, effective functional relocation of the robot and product design for human robot collaboration.

This paper will be useful for three cohorts of readers, namely, the manufacturers who require a baseline for development and deployment of robots; users of robots-seeking manufacturing advantage and researchers looking for new directions for further exploration of human–machine collaboration.

Despite the proven evidence of ever-growing productivity gains in the manufacturing industry as a result of years of research and investment in advanced technologies, such as robotics, the adoption of robots in construction is still lagging. The existing literature lacks technical frameworks and guidelines that account for the one-of-a-kind nature of construction projects and the myriad of materials and dimensional components in construction activities. This study seeks to address existing technical uncertainty and productivity issues associated with the application of robotics in the assembly-type manufacturing of industrialized construction.

To facilitate the selection of suitable robotic arms for industrialized construction activities, primarily assembly-type manufacturing tasks of offsite production processes, an activity-based ranking system based on axiomatic design principles is proposed. The proposed ranking system utilizes five functional requirements derived from robot characteristics—speed, payload, reach, degrees of freedom and position repeatability—to evaluate robot performance in an industrialized construction task using simulations of a framing station.

Based on design parameters obtained from activity-based simulations, seventy six robotic arms suitable for the framing task were scored and ranked. According to the sensitivity analysis of proposed functional requirements, speed is the key functional requirement that has a notable effect on productivity of a framing station and is thus the determinant in robot performance assessment for framing tasks.

The proposed ranking system is expected to augment automation in construction and serve as a preliminary guideline to help construction professionals in making informed decisions regarding the adoption of robotic arms.

Examines the results of a questionnaire‐based survey on the use of teach pendants with industrial robots. The main aims of the survey were to ascertain the following: extent of use of teach pendants with industrial robots; methods of robot programming used; possible difficulties of using teach pendants; and the future for teach pendants. Outlines the structure of the survey and evaluates the results from the questionnaire. Concludes that teach pendants are still one of the principal means of programming a robot and that difficulties controlling the motion of robots with teach pendants need to be addressed.