Joseph Engelberger
Businessman who introduced robots to the world’s workplaces
JOSEPH ENGELBERGER, who has died aged 90, was an American entrepreneur who co-founded the world’s first robotics company with fellow engineer George Devol in 1956; five years later their industrial robot, the Unimate, set to work in a factory in New Jersey.
Though Devol created the prototype for the mechanical arms that would later become common on assembly lines, it fell to Engelberger to sell the idea in the industrial workplace. The car manufacturing business was the first to adopt it, with General Motors in Trenton, New Jersey, installing a Unimate arm in 1961. “It helped with working people that the first robots were put to work doing hot, hazardous, and dull labour,” Engelberger observed. The machine operated without a hitch for nearly ten years, keeping up with three shifts of human workers every day.
Initially, however, nobody outside General Motors took much notice. An appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1966 had the Unimate pouring beer and waving a conductor’s baton, but the stunt resulted only in calls from county fairs looking for a new attraction. Having approached other American manufacturers without success, Engelberger took his pitch to Japan, where he had a warmer reception. By the early 1980s Japan had transformed itself into an industry leader, responsible for building more than 50 per cent of the world’s industrial robots.
The son of German immigrant parents, Joseph Frederick Engelberger was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 26 1925. The family moved to Connecticut during the Great Depression but Joseph returned to New York City for his college education, where he first encountered the works of Isaac Asimov. A fascination with robots motivated him to study Physics at Columbia University, followed by a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. To fund his studies he enrolled in the US Navy’s officer training programme and worked on early nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. In 1946 he joined Manning, Maxwell & Moore, working his way up to become chief of engineering in the aircraft products division.
It was at a cocktail party in 1956 that Engelberger met George Devol, who had recently completed work on a mechanical arm that he called a “programmed article-handling device”. They bonded over a mutual admiration for Asimov, while Engelberger immediately recognised the significance of Devol’s invention. He bought out the licensed technology from Manning, Maxwell & Moore and secured financial backing for a robotics company, to be called Unimation (short for “Universal automation”).
Engelberger became the president and chief promoter of the company, which expanded to employ more than 1,000 people. He and Devol eventually parted ways, and in 1983 Engelberger sold Unimation for $107 million. The following year he founded Transitions Research Corp in Danbury, Connecticut.
Subsequently renamed HelpMate Robotics, the company set out to create robots nimble enough for homes and public buildings. In 1988 Danbury Hospital acquired the company’s first robotic couriers, to deliver supplies throughout the building. By the dawn of the new millennium, dozens of hospitals worldwide had bought one.
Other prototypes created under Engelberger’s watch included the ScrubMate, a janitorial robot capable of cleaning lavatories, and Isaac (named after Asimov), a domestic assistant. He also worked on technologies tailored towards elderly and disabled people.
A fully articulate robot, as he saw it, should be able to help a person from room to room and even hold a modest conversation. “We’ll eventually have our robots, like Boston ladies have their hats,” he told The New
Scientist in 1983. Joseph Engelberger’s wife Margaret died in 2007. Their two children survive him.
Joseph Engelberger, born July 26 1925, died December 1 2015