Students of a private engineering institute in Patiala district of Punjab have manufactured a robot to handle hazardous work.

The computer-controlled robotic arm has been designed and developed by Amrit Pal Singh, Gaganbir Singh, Kuljinder Singh and Randeep Singh of the mechnical engineering department of Sri Sukhmani Institute of Engineering and Technology at Dera Bassi.

"Robotic arms applications can be used and applied in manufacturing operations and industrial installations," said institute chairman Prof Avtar Singh.

"Our endeavour is to provide a substitution of human labour, handling of difficult operations, multi-shifts, handling of hazardous work," say the students.

Describing the robotic arm as "dynamic technology," the chairman said the equipment was aimed at attaining more productivity, accuracy, reduction in accident hazards, repetitive tasks and success in difficult operations which manual labour can not achieve.

Talking about the equipment, the students said the robotic arm was a programmable multifunction manipulator, designed to move material parts, tools and special devices through variable programmed for a variety of tasks. The robot arm is the most typical anthropomorphic or human-like character, according to the students.

"This arm together with the robot programme capacity makes it ideally suitable to variety of production as well as industrial tasks like machine loading, spray painting, assembly, transferring material and welding," the students said, adding that micro computers and micro processors controlled the built-in automatic control system.

The computer keyboard can be used along with 'sephanumeric' keys to control the electronic devices. The mechanical assembly is controlled by software. A computer's printer port can be used to control all devices which are used at home.

The institute chairman says the robots can be exploited for industrial as well as other operations like ocean exploration, agriculture and factory, construction industry, mining, material building and spray welding. The chairman said the estimated expenditure of this equipment was about 2000-3000 Rupees.

The other fields in which the robotic arm applications could be utilised included material handling consisting of loading and unloading and in casting and moulding processes where molten metals, raw material and other parts in various stages can be handled.