Golden Robot Award 2000 for development of new robot application

Citation

(2000), "Golden Robot Award 2000 for development of new robot application", Industrial Robot, Vol. 27 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2000.04927eab.004

Golden Robot Award 2000 for development of new robot application

Golden Robot Award 2000 for development of new robot application

Keywords Awards, Robots, ABB

Mr John Weller of the United States Postal Services receives the 17th Golden Robot Award in recognition of his development of robot solutions in a new area with large growth potentials (see Plate 3).

Plate 3 Mr John Weller, winner of the 17th Golden Robot Award

Mr Weller began research and analysis of the commercial robot market to adapt commercial, off-the-shelf, material handling robots into the postal environment. He prototyped both pedestal and gantry solutions for the handling of dispatch-ready mail trays and tubs. Mr Weller managed the deployment of the first 100 commercial robots installed in postal material handling operations and has acted as a consultant for the Robotic Containerization System (RCS) program, which is the first large-scale acquisition and deployment of material handling robots in the Postal Service.

He has then continued to develop other applications for industrial robots for postal material handling operations.

Furthermore, he has submitted concept papers to postal management describing the role of robots in the postal environment for not only material handling, but also mail transport, truck loading and unloading, collection box servicing, and actual mail delivery to neighbourhood delivery boxes.

He has written and presented papers for the RIA Safety conferences, as well as the Robotics and Vision show of 1999. He has also served as a Director for the RIA Board and as a member on the Program and Membership Committees of the RIA Board. In the past he has served as the postal representative to The Logistics Institute at Georgia Technical University.

Mr Weller has 25 years' experience in the field of material handling and systems design and engineering. He has worked with industry leaders such as IBM, Unisys, and the United States Postal Service in capacities as diverse as research and development; system design; test system development, conduct, and acceptance; system and operator training; system troubleshooting; and strategic and tactical planning.

For further details, please contact Christina Bredin, ABB Robotics, Sweden. Tel: +46 21 344 001; E-mail: christina.bredin@se.abb.com