Present state and trends in robot technology

Abstract Sensory feedback control is utilized in order to make a robot intelligent. This paper describes the present status of intelligent robots by introducing robot systems with force and visual sensors developed in Hitachi, Ltd. The force feedback control named “virtual compliance mechanism” can generate the same functions as any other compliance mechanism such as rcc for inserting operation by setting suitable values to the parameters of the software in the control unit. 3-D visual feedback control method is also described in which the slit light method is used to recognize 3-dimensional position and orientation of the object.