But now we come to a robot that we can demonstrate for you.
It's the PUMA, which stands for programmable universal machine
for assembly.
In fact, it'll do many other things as well.
Mr. Hammond is in complete control.
I hope, and so he'll now start the robot off.
So that's the starting position.
He has several movements.
That's waist, now shoulder.
As for the right arm, that's a shoulder movement
as for the left arm.
That's two movements.
That's elbow that makes three.
And then we have free movements of the wrist, roll, pitch,
and yaw.
So that's the complete set of movements
with the gripper at the end.
That head can be replaced by various devices
according to the job required to do.
Now these are the single movements.
There's an electric motor driving each of these joints.
Now we'll show you that the arm can be coordinated,
so that, like your own arm, you move
various joints at the same time to produce certain motions.
And so let's go off with the coordinated motion
in a straight line.
Called that the x direction, if you like.
There she goes.
Now we'll do the y direction.
And the z direction.
And then he can do inclined lines.
I'd better let him start, I think,
so I know which way he's going for this.
All the joints, practically all, are
moving as he follows that trace and now he's doing that one.
And no doubt will follow it by that one.
So that's three lines in different directions.
So now he'll show you something about reproducibility i.e
getting back to the same place in succession.
For that, we will apply that point pointer.
Its gripped.
I will now stand safely back and watch the proceedings.
That's a point in space, a marker,
and he's approaching from behind.
He's now doing a rapid movement in space, showing off a little
you might say.
And coming back from the top.
Important thing is that he's getting back to the same place.
He's showing off again and now he's
coming in again to exactly the same position.
That's good.
So you can see it repeats itself,
and it can do these motions in between.
We take the pointer out now and invite a challenger
to see if he can beat the robot at a game, with which I
have to say, the robot is extremely good.
So do we have a volunteer?
Douglas.
Douglas has, I have to admit, I tried this before.
Now this is the competition.
Douglas will, in a moment, point this little curved piece
of wire, and I switch it on, you can
see that every time he touches that wire,
it makes a rather unpleasant noise.
Now your job is to take it around,
Douglas if you will, in one hand,
around the wire and see how far I get
without making funny noises.
Once, doing really well, thank you, keep going.
Can you just go a little faster?
[BEEPING]
Two.
[BEEPING]
Three.
[BEEPING]
That's very good.
If we stop at the top, that's a very,
and you're putting it back, and we'll switch the machine off.
And I may tell you that that's not an easy thing to do.
I touched about 20 times on the first curve.
So Douglas has done extremely well.
[APPLAUSE]
You notice I switch the machine off.
Well, we'll start off by getting the robot
to switch it back on again.
It's on.
[BEEPING]
Oh dear.
That's not very good.
I think it can do better that.
Mr. Hammond is now telling it to get going.
[BEEPING]
Oh dear.
Couldn't you do something to it and get it going round
without doing that?
Ah.
Now he's got it going.
So far so good.
That's going to be a clean run, I think, this time.
Well that's very, very good.
Can it do any better than that you think?
Watch it showing off at the top.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]