The first industrial robot set up in 1961 at New Jersey’s General Motors Plant in Trenton is to be honored, at the Automate 2011 show with a special pavilion named “50 years: A Tribute to Industrial Robots”.
This pavilion would feature a timeline, which exhibits a choice of vintage robots, an appraisal of the imaginary robots created via science fiction through the ages, and also demonstrates the technical progress achieved by robotics from 1961 onwards. The Automate 2011 would be held between the 21st and the 24th of March at the McCormick Place in Chicago.
A special tribute to the father of robotics, Joseph F. Engelberger would also be given, by showing an archival video of the Unimate robot, which was launched by Engelberger’s company and also interviews of Engelberger taken during the infancy period of robotics.
Jeff Burnstein who is the industry trade group’s President of Robotic Industries Association (RIA) has stated that there were over one million industrial robots installed all over the world in factories, and all this happened due to Joe Engelberger’s company Unimation. George Devol who held the patent to the Unimate met Engelberger in 1956 at a cocktail party and that is where it all began. The tribute pavilion would present the timeline of how the Unimate evolved.
The RIA would present the Engelberger Robotics Awards, which is the industry’s highest honor to Dr. Henrik Christensen, Director of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines from Georgia Institute of Technology and Åke Lindqvist, former Vice President of ABB Robotics on March 22. These awards were initiated in 1977 and to date over 113 industrial leaders from 16 nations have received it and all the recipient’s names would be listed in the tribute pavilion.
This show is the biggest automation event in North America and exhibits robotics, motion control and machine vision solutions by more than 170 companies. Over 40 tutorials and conference sessions have also been planned for this show. According to Burnstein, over 7500 visitors were to attend the exhibition and many companies from all over the world would like to know the advantages offered by automation. This would be covered in the show and of special importance is the presentation given by Drew Greenblatt who is the President of Marlin Steel Wire, where he would share with the audience his story of robots helping him to trounce his competitors in China. The presentation would be on March 22nd at 10:00 am after the keynote address by General Motors and NASA at 8:45 am, which would be on the Robonaut 2 a humanoid robot sent to space.
Source: http://www.automate2011.com