Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the computer and microelectronics industry in the 1980s has been the failure of robotics to live up to the bright hopes and expectations for it: General Motors Corp represented 40% of the market, and now that GM is rethinking its hubristic belief that it could effortlessly harness and manage futuristic technology, all bets are off, and the New York Times reports that the Robots XI exhibition in Chicago earlier this month was a shadow of its former self, with the cream of the US robotics industry – Cincinnati Milacron, Westinghouse, IBM, General Electric, Asea, Automatix, American Cimflex, Prab Robots, Intellidex, not there; the Robot Industry Association reports that 1986 sales fell to 5,713 robots worth $363.8m from 6,748 worth $483.2m in 1985 – and fears sales will fall another 30% this year
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