robotics and automation

Born from a chance encounter between a robotics tinkerer and an Isaac Asimov-inspired engineer-turned-entrepreneur, the Unimate—a single-armed, vacuum tube-driven robot—was put to work on the assembly lines of the General Motors plant in Ewing, New Jersey in 1961. It was a watershed moment for industrial robotics and the first sign of changes that would rewrite the rules for automation, employment, and trade.