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The original name of ABB’s robot factory at Bryne was Trallfa, a company that pioneered development of a robot for spray painting in 1965 – 67. It has its origin in a company manufacturing wheelbarrows, sack trolleys and transport equipment, which was founded in Bryne in 1941 by Nils Underhaug.
Nils Underhaug, a young man from Nærbø, wanted to enter into the automobile repair trade. By the age of 17, he had already created his first automobile, a monster with four bicycle wheels and a 1 ½ horse power engine, which scared the horses in the neighborhood and aroused the surrounding farmers’ disapproval. But it worked! Little did he know then that he would later come to play an important part in the world of the automotive industry.
Nils completed his education and apprenticeship as an auto mechanic and worked for some years repairing automobiles. In 1941 Nils decided to start his own company. Equipped with a case of automobile tools and USD 2000 in the bank, plus an optimistic outlook on life, he started a trolley factory – Trallfa – on February 1, 1941.
Nils started out with only two employees. The factory grew steadily, and soon Trallfa could move into its first real factory building. Wheelbarrows became their specialty. New designs were created, prices lowered and the new wheelbarrows became a great success. The wheelbarrows were painted by hand, and despite the fact that several workers with modern equipment worked in shifts, painting became a bottleneck.
In 1962, Jæren Automation Association, with Nils Underhaug as chairman, employed Ole Molaug as manager. Molaug was a young mechanical engineer from a small place at the farthest end of a fjord in western Norway. After graduating from technical college, he returned to his father’s workshop to earn a living at the wood turning lathe. He early had the idea to use electronic devices on the shop floor, and wondered a lot about constructing a robot. He learned electronics through private
studies. Later he received a grant from the Research Council of Norway to continue his studies.
Molaug brought his robot idea up for Nils Underhaug and were challenged to come up with specific plans for a spray painting robot. Ole studied the spray painting methods at Trallfa and on July 1, 1964, he presented a paper outlining his idea accompanied by a simple sketch, estimating the cost to USD 1500 – 2000. Nils Underhaug gave Ole Molaug the go ahead.
Molaug took charge of the electronics and tool maker Sverre Bergene from Trallfa was entrusted with solving the mechanical and hydraulic challenges. They worked at night and into the small hours, while doing their ordinary work during the day. Even though colleagues began to gossip about “those expensive toys”, they never lost faith.
In the summer of 1966, the robot had progressed far enough to be introduced at the Trallfa stand of the local exhibition “Jærdagen”. There it executed profile drawings, and crowds gathered to see this strange contraption performing.
So far so good, but would it really work? The opportunity came in February, 1967, when the robot had a trial run at the conveyor in the factory’s paint shop. Nils Underhaug had the honor of pressing the button to start the robot. Start it did, and painted wheelbarrow boxes passing along the conveyor – one after the other. The results were excellent.

To make a long story short, Trallfa decided to go into production with its robot. In 1969 the first industrial spray painting robot were delivered to Sweden for bath tub enameling. The company established itself early as the leading supplier of robots for spray painting applications, as it still is today in ABB.

Also, Ccontributed greatly on the electronics side.

The above images from Tormod Henne, December 2009 book on the history of ABB robots.

Ole Molaug

March 15,1966 "The Torun Robot" – Torun, Poland, is famous for the Gingerbread Man  and now a robot. Marian Jasnoch, a young electrical engineer has been working on this robot since 1962. The robot can answer a phone, convey a few simple sentences, record messages, nurse a baby, clean a room, Bake a cake in an electrical cooker, act as a waiter, play an instrument, sing, walk and move its head, eyes and hands.

The Womaniser, now owned by the Tate Gallery, which was inspired by 'wondering what it would be like to be a hermaphrodite and make love to myself. It had six breasts and rubber gloves that inflated every 30 seconds'.

A life-sized figure, assembled out of inflatables and prosthetics, has been strapped to a dentist’s chair. The figure’s see-through head is filled with cuttings from porn mags. Instead of hands, it sports half a dozen rubber gloves, and whenever a battered old engine begins pumping air into these rubber gloves, they inflate and start to fondle a row of breasts arranged along the figure’s chest.

Art & the Sixties, exhibition themes, Swinging Sixties…..1960s Britain witnessed a seismic shift in attitudes towards sex and sexuality. The contraceptive pill made casual sex easier and safer. The 1957 Wolfenden Report recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality, finally legalised in 1967, and abortion and divorce were made easier. All this led to the idea of a ‘permissive society’.

But liberalisation of attitudes towards sex did not mean liberation for women. While some artists’ work reflected the new, freer attitudes, others articulated anxiety about the objectification of woman and the commodification of sex. All these social changes were not only reflected in the art and photography of the period, but also perpetuated by such images.

Lacey made a number of humanoid robots from an eclectic collection of redundant objects. Here these include real prosthetic limbs, a Victorian dentist’s chair, a stand for displaying bras and a plastic head filled with cuttings from pornographic magazines. Lacey wanted to express the unease he felt at the way society’s increasingly liberal attitude to sex objectified women and conditioned men to become womanisers with sex ‘on the brain’.

From The Tate.

Visual Indigestion
In this vast and crowded portmanteau show there is a welcome amount of colour and humour. Take Philip King's inventive sculpture 'Tra-La-La' (1963), an exploration of colour in space, in pink and blue plastic. Bruce Lacey's 'Womanizer' (1966) couldn't be more different – a seedy figure reclining on an ancient dentist's chair, with three pairs of pink, rubber-gloved hands, which inflate and deflate at regular intervals in an appalling quiver of lust.

The Spectator; London July 31, 2009

See other Bruce Lacey robots here, here and here.

See other Pneumatic, Fluidic, and Inflatable robots here.

Artists concept of the Lunar Worm, showing a large, crawling Pneumatic bellows shelter, and a smaller transport vehicle with side-by-side circular bellows.

The crawling motion is not gained by pumping fluid (air) in or out of the bellow segments, but uses a mechanical travelling-wave connected to the pneumatic-bellows structure.

The Epoch Times July 20, 2009 

Lunar Worm: The Idea That Never Took Shape
By LEONARDO VINTIÑI – Epoch Times Staff
“For many years Aeronautronic has conducted studies of improved concepts for off-road vehicles based on analyses of mobility in nature.
One of the first things learned in a study of animals is that most of the—in particular the ones which move closer to the ground—tend to be long and slender. The extreme examples of the slenderizing trend are the snakes and various specious of worms. These animals take advantage of their elongated form to spread their weight over a large area, and the resultant low ground pressure allows them to move over very soft ground,”—NASA report, 1966
The Lunar Worm…a truly unique proposal! No, this isn’t about a three-eyed worm from the cartoon “Lunar Jim,” but a space rover project that never materialized, presented by the Aeronutronic division of the Philco Corporation.
Inspired by the undulating movement of certain snakes, the Lunar Worm project seemed promising.
It was presented to NASA in 1966, and it was studied as a possible means of mobility in a low-gravity environment such as the moon.
But the Lunar Worm was not to be; the project was never approved, but its advantages were obvious:
with a contracting movement, a great cylindrical-shaped vehicle would be able to inch its way around in the most difficult terrain, and at a considerable speed (5 mph). This ingenious design could overcome challenging geographical obstacles that would stop more conventional vehicles in its tracks.
Aside from increased mobility offered by this sine-wave shaped travel, the slithering Lunar Worm would also have other advantages over its rivals on wheels. First, the hazardous lunar dust, capable of worming its way into every crevice, moving part, and electronic circuit of a conventional space craft, would be of no concern for the Lunar Worm, whose flexible bellows would be completely covered by a protective membrane.
Furthermore, the internal space inside such a craft would allow for more room. One model proposed a Lunar Worm that could carry scientific equipment and two crew members, and also act as an appropriately pressurized, temporary dwelling. Another slower-moving but larger version described a mobile shelter that could house a group of astronauts for up to a year.
There were also plans for a similar unmanned design for exploratory purposes.
The Lunar Worm was to be an economical design as well. Power requirements for this rib-walker were thought to be much less than other vehicles of a similar size. Still, engineers met with some significant obstacles when designing a large, mechanical worm.
According to the extensive and dedicated reports about the Lunar Worm, one of the major challenges of the proposal was the selection of a flexible membrane to seal the expandable bellows. This material would need to be capable of tolerating the friction, temperatures, and the continual erosion brought on by the environment.
The peristaltic vibrations of its waveform travel made it the perfect vehicle for soft soils, but at the same time it would produce a smooth voyage, without rebounds. Plus, it could be neatly folded up for easy shipping or storage. But despite
its list of advantages—and decidedly whimsical shape—NASA decided not to go with the unusual design; the worm never won.
Although an actual vehicle never materialized, the calculations, diagrams and design ideas of the Lunar Worm still exist for posterity…or future inspiration. See NASA CR-66098 FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR LUNAR WORM PLANETARY ROVING VEHICLE CONCEPT by F. A. Dobson and D. G. Fulton pdf here.

Perhaps the concept is merely waiting for its true calling: to jump out of the pages of a science fiction story.

An early, if not the first plans for a radio-controlled model of a Dalek by C. Rowlands as published in Radio Control models and Electronics Jan 1966 (really for Chrismas, Dec 1965).

see pdf here