PETROLIA, CA—Victor Scheinman, the Stanford engineering professor whose electrically powered, computer-controlled robot would become the Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly (PUMA) robot, has died at age 73.
NEWTOWN, CT—Joseph F. Engelberger, an engineer and entrepreneur who pioneered the robotics field, died Dec. 1, 2015, at age 90. Engelberger was founder and president of Unimation Inc., the world’s first industrial robotics manufacturer, which he launched in 1956 and grew into a company with more than 1,000 employees before the enterprise was acquired by Westinghouse.
ZURICH—Björn Weichbrodt, who lead the team that developed the first commercially available, all-electric, microprocessor-controlled robot has died at age 76.
