Industrial Robots

Industrial robots automate welding, handling, painting and assembly. Learn robot types and specifications (payload, reach, repeatability), programming methods (teach pendant, offline), cell design, safety standards, collaborative robots and ROI.

Over 4 million industrial robots work in factories worldwide — welding car bodies, palletising boxes, tending machines and assembling electronics. They are chosen for consistency, speed, and taking over dull, dirty and dangerous work.

Deploying a robot successfully is a system-engineering task: the robot is only 25–40 % of cell cost; grippers, fixtures, safety, programming and integration make up the rest.

An analogy

A robot is like a new, extremely consistent employee who never tires — but who needs precise instructions, the right tools and a safe workplace.

Robot types

Articulated 6-axis (most versatile: welding, handling), SCARA (fast planar assembly), delta/parallel (very fast picking of light items), Cartesian/gantry (large workspaces, heavy loads), collaborative robots (cobots — safe near people, easy to program), and mobile manipulators (AMR + arm).

Specifications and selection

Payload (including gripper and moment/inertia limits), reach, repeatability (typically ±0.02–0.1 mm), speed/cycle time, protection class (IP67, cleanroom, food-grade), mounting (floor, ceiling, wall), and controller features (vision, force control, safety options).

Programming

Teach pendant (jog and record points), offline programming and simulation (RoboDK, RobotStudio, ROBOGUIDE) to design cells and generate paths from CAD, and lead-through/hand-guiding for cobots. ROS/ROS 2 is common in research and advanced applications.

Safety and economics

ISO 10218-1/2 cover robot and cell safety; ISO/TS 15066 gives force/pressure limits for collaborative operation. Risk assessment chooses safeguards: fences and interlocked doors, light curtains, safety scanners with speed-and-separation monitoring, safety-rated zones. Economic justification weighs labour savings, quality, throughput and flexibility against integration cost.

Formulas

Worked example: Throughput

Given: Cycle time 12 s; 2 shifts × 7.5 h, 85 % availability

Find: Parts per day.

Answer: ≈ 3800 parts/day

Worked example: Simple payback

Given: Cell cost 60 000; Replaces work worth 70 000/year (2 shifts)

Find: Payback period.

Answer: ≈ 10 months (before maintenance, energy and programming costs)

Pick-and-place in ABB RAPID

MODULE PickPlace
  CONST robtarget pPick  := [[500,300,200],[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,0],[9E9,9E9,9E9,9E9,9E9,9E9]];
  CONST robtarget pPlace := [[100,650,250],[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,0],[9E9,9E9,9E9,9E9,9E9,9E9]];
  PROC main()
    MoveJ Offs(pPick,0,0,100), v2000, z50, tGripper;   ! approach above part
    MoveL pPick, v500, fine, tGripper;                  ! straight down
    SetDO doGripperClose, 1;  WaitTime 0.2;
    MoveL Offs(pPick,0,0,100), v1000, z20, tGripper;
    MoveJ Offs(pPlace,0,0,100), v2000, z50, tGripper;
    MoveL pPlace, v500, fine, tGripper;
    SetDO doGripperClose, 0;  WaitTime 0.2;
    MoveL Offs(pPlace,0,0,100), v1000, z20, tGripper;
  ENDPROC
ENDMODULE

MoveJ = joint-interpolated (fastest), MoveL = straight line; v = speed (mm/s), z = corner blending zone, fine = stop exactly. KUKA KRL, FANUC TP and URScript follow similar ideas.

Common mistakes

Applications

Key takeaways

Going further