Industrial robots have become increasingly prevalent in industrial environments. You can find them in diverse industries ranging from welding robots in the automotive sector to warehouses to optimize logistics. There are several motivations for the manufacturing industry to consider industrial robots: Production cost is a rising factor while prices for robots keep falling. Production quality and precisely repeatable processes are essential, and dirty and dangerous actions are made for industrial robots to relieve human workers from working in these environments.

The main building blocks of industrial robots are the controller that allows for controlling the robot's components and enabling the monitoring of its environment, the manipulator (e.g., robot's arm) that operates on actual objects and sensors providing information to the controller on position, speed, but also the surrounding environment.