To serve its purpose, an industrial robot must be harnessed to a
manufacturing task, be it welding, assembly, adjustment or the
inspection of food products. Complex tasks are likely to require offline
programming, both for economy of equipment use and to permit computer
simulations for collision avoidance. Vision and other sensory systems
are helping to extend the capabilities of robots, while advanced
programming techniques are making their use more accessible to the shop
floor.
The authors have addressed these and many other subjects in a volume
which will be of value to industry and to robotic researchers alike.