Publications / 1994 Proceedings of the 11th ISARC, Brighton, United Kingdom
Mature robots in the manufacturing industry, i.e. those which have been in operation for 10 to 15 years, start to show wear out characteristics as the lives of individual components are exceeded. Studies in the automotive industry, for example, where robots have been used for mass production for over 15 years, show that robots fail rom a vast range of component failure modes, including mechanical drive faults, electronic failures in drive and control, and control parametric failures. In automated plants, for example, the robots may account for 20% of lost production time and cost £ millions per year in lost production. In the future, the construction industry will doubtless adopt more and more automation and robotic solutions for its processes, and will thus face similar problems. This is particularly so as the construction site presents a far more adverse environment for automation and robotics generally found in the manufacturing industry.