This Japanese Engineer Created the Robots That Make Your Cars

It is well-known nowadays that robots do much of the work making a car, their giant arms swinging in precise motion to bolt on doors and weld metal. Less well-known is one of the major figures behind that assembly-line transformation, a Japanese engineer who built an empire at the base of Mount Fuji where his own robots churned out robots for the world's factories. Seiuemon Inaba, who died at age 95 on Oct. 2, led robot maker Fanuc Corp. from its start as a Fujitsu Ltd. spinoff in 1972. Today it is one of the principal industrial-robot makers in the world with a market value of some $40 billion, helping make products as diverse as cars and smartphones. Born March 5, 1925, in Chikusei, a small city some 50 miles north of Tokyo, Mr. Inaba was the son of a local landowner.