Unimate was the first industrial robot installed on a production line. General Motors installed the machine at its plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, in 1961.
Inventor George Devol designed the programmable robotic manipulator, and entrepreneur Joseph Engelberger helped turn the idea into a commercial product. Unimate performed dangerous, repetitive work involving hot die-cast metal parts, moving components between machines and reducing the need for workers to handle them directly.
Unimate is sometimes described as the first industrial robot, although earlier mechanical automation devices existed. Its importance came from combining programmable control with a production-line application. The robot’s success helped establish industrial robotics as a practical technology in automobile manufacturing and influenced later factory robots.