American beer cans. They still had
the beer can printing on the inside
of the metal shells. Metal was scarce
in those days and you used what
you could find to get back into
manufacturing.
The Beginnings of the
Japanese Industrial
Robot Industry
FIGURE 5. Original Robot Lilliput
from Flickr.
FIGURE 6. Nine inch tin Robot Lilliput
replica from Zero Toys.
Figure 5. The original had yellow arms
and legs and hexagonal feet, unlike
the later reproduction shown in Figure
6 made by Schylling. Figure 7 is
another Zero Toys reproduction robot
that shoots sparks from its face mask
and is remarkably similar to Robbie
from Forbidden Planet. If you’ve
managed to get your hands on one
of the originals, hang on to it.
After the war, the Japanese got
right back into toy making and
thousands of types and styles of
robots were made and shipped worldwide in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In this era,
the robots began to take on what I
would call a sinister appearance with
strange points all over their bodies
and many things that did not seem to
have any purpose. Figure 8 is one of
these types of robots from collection
dx.com, — a Mekanda DX2.
The Japanese imports always
seemed to have the best and most
complex robots when I was a kid. I
had several classics in those days and I
wish I knew what happened to them.
I also remember seeing several that
were just like the bent tin toys of the
pre-war period but were made of
FIGURE 7. Nine inch Planet Robot shoots
sparks from its face mask.
FIGURE 8. Mekanda DX2 from
Collectiondx.
I’ll take a leap from the earlier
toys to the industrial realm that truly
put the Japanese on the robot scene.
Though the true beginnings of
Japanese interest in robotics began
many hundreds of years ago, the
actual development of industrial
robots in Japan was in the early
1960s. Yes, George Devol and Joe
Engelberger of the US were the first
developers, but the Japanese took US
innovations and implemented them
throughout their factories and the
factories of the world. By the 1970s,
Japan’s many robot manufacturers
had developed many practical and
novel applications, and true ‘high
tech’ robots began to become
available for specialized factory and
non-industrial uses in the ‘80s.
Innovation in robotics was not left
to the US as Japanese manufacturers
soon dominated the robot industry
with lines of extremely creative and
unique machines. When the shift in
consumer electronics production
was moved from Japan’s shores in
the ‘90s to the Third World, Japan
suffered a lower demand for its
robotic products.
As of mid 2008, half of the
world’s total of 951,000 industrial
robots were installed in Asian
factories with the lion’s share of
those in Japan. FANUC, MotoMan/
Yaskawa, Seiko, Denso, and other
Japanese companies rapidly
overshadowed American,
European, and other Asian
companies with robot installations
in factories around the world.
Unimation and other American
companies were either bought
out by the large Japanese
conglomerates or completely
shoved out of Detroit’s car
78 SERVO 12.2008
