was coined in 1997 under which both companies now trade. Also in 1992 Sands Technology formed one of the first joint venture companies with the USSR under Perestroika with the formation of Association Robot in Ekaterinburg, now dormant. Technology ST Robotics uses technology which is based on hybrid stepping motors as opposed to the more usual DC servo motors. For some years the technology had problems from lack of power and motor resonance. These problems were solved with the advent of rare–earth hybrid motors, high voltage micro-stepping drives and incremental encoder feedback. The robots calibrate themselves by driving each axis slowly to a target sensed by a proximity detector. Incremental optical encoders then track along with the motors to check for errors. This is called closed loop control which differs from servo control in that the stepping motors run essentially an open loop — the loop is only closed at the end of each movement of the arm. ST’s latest arm, the R12 Mk2, has the encoders only as an option. The ST robot controller uses two processors: one to run the embedded RoboForth programming language and a digital signal processor (DSP) to control the motors. The DSP is able to control all axes collectively with individual axes ramping up or down as necessary for a compound motion. At the same time it reads back the encoders data and passes this information to the CPU which also uses the DSP's timers. RobWin is a GUI project manager for PC to create and edit projects and save them on disk but RoboForth, the user's program and all data are saved in flash memory in the controller. See also RoboForth References External links Companies established in 1995 Robotics companies of the United States Companies based in Cambridge Companies based in Princeton, New Jersey Technology companies of the United Kingdom Technology companies of the United States Industrial robotics