First Unimate Industrial Robot at General Motors
First Unimate Industrial Robot at General Motors was installed in 1961 at the Inland Fisher Guide plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, where the programmable arm lifted hot die-cast metal parts and stacked them.
What happened and why it matters
The Unimate proved that a programmable robot arm could do a repetitive, hazardous job in a real factory, starting the industrial robot business that warehouse automation later grew from. George Devol patented the concept and partnered with Joseph Engelberger, and their company, Unimation, sold the first unit to General Motors. Unlike a fixed machine, the arm stored a sequence of moves and could be reprogrammed for new tasks. Palletizing robots, robotic piece-picking cells and collaborative robots descend from this line, and fulfillment teams still judge them the way GM did: by uptime, cycle time and the labor and injuries they avoid.
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Related events
Sources
- First industrial production robot (Guinness World Records) guinnessworldrecords.com
- Unimation (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org