Word: robotical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Volkswagon vans in one shot. The climactic battle that ensues in a closed-down steel mill is exciting and original in a movie genre replete with a thousand cliches and tricks. In the end, Robocop tracks down Dick in his corporate headquarters, which is guarded by a hilariously inept robot-tank which looks like a sumo wrestler...
This movie is a handsome machine too, but with a dark, cynical streak. / RoboCop means business -- Big Business. Its plot describes a marriage of venality between psycho punks and white-collar killers, to rule a city in the near nightmare future. One exec (Ronny Cox) has devised a robot, ED 209, to patrol the streets, but ED is too slow in the brain and too fatally quick on the draw. So another schemer (Miguel Ferrer) assembles the spare parts of a mangled policeman (Peter Weller), fuses them with some state-of-the-art plumbing and creates a bionic bobby...
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...
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...
...current slump does not necessarily signal the demise of American robotics. The industry is expected to perk up again by the end of 1988, partly because of increases in U.S. competitiveness caused by the falling dollar. Struggling American manufacturers have begun to adopt the electronic robot technologies of the Japanese and, like U.S. automakers, are moving their own assembly plants overseas to help cut costs. Above all, U.S. robotmakers have adjusted their own expectations of how the industry will perform in the future. "We're in a solid business with solid growth," says Bruce Haupt, a marketing manager...