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Even as U.S. robotmakers wallowed in their early success, the Japanese, who imported their first hydraulic robot in 1967, were coming up with a new product. Fitted with high-speed computer chips and sophisticated circuitry, the new electric machines received instructions via computer-software programs. The machines tended to be smaller, less expensive ($5,000 to $40,000 each) and not as prone to breakdowns as their U.S. hydraulic counterparts. - Though electric robots were less powerful, and thus less capable of heavy industrial tasks, their greater accuracy in tasks such as delicate manipulation and precision welding made them more attractive for the automotive, aerospace and electronics industries.
American manufacturers were soon suffering as foreign-built electronic robots stormed the U.S. market. At Unimation, sales dropped from $70 million in 1983 -- the year Westinghouse bought the firm -- to $45 million in 1985, then to $38 million last year. Overall, Japanese robotmakers account for 28% of all sales in the U.S. Worldwide, Japanese sales exceed those of U.S. competitors by 30%.
Exaggerated claims about what U.S. robots could do for businesses proved to be just as debilitating. Says Laura Conigliaro, analyst with the Prudential Bache investment firm: "The robot industry promised more than it could deliver. The technology was not as advanced or sophisticated as promised." Many companies discovered that buying an industrial robot was only the first, and least expensive, step in automating their factories. Says Carnegie- Mellon's Reddy: "Suddenly they needed experts in computer science, communications and database technology. The number of people in factories with this expertise is probably zero." Adds Warren Seering, professor of mechanical engineering at M.I.T.: "In general, robots are much more expensive than people."
Some of those who rushed to buy an expensive robotic system got less than they bargained for. At a Ford Motor plant in St. Louis, snags in 200 production-line robots delayed the 1986 introduction of the Aerostar minivan. Then the discovery that the same robots had been skipping many key welds led to the recall three months later of some 30,000 of the vehicles. In another disastrous episode, a Campbell Soup plant in Napoleon, Ohio, was outfitted with a $215,000 system designed to lift 50-lb. cases of soup. But anytime it encountered defective cases, the machine would drop them, causing thousands of dollars in damage. Eventually the robot was donated to a local university and replaced by three humans. Says Warren Helmer, the company's manager of engineering research and development: "Campbell's was ready for robots, but robots weren't ready for Campbell's."