It is in the early 80's when Reymond Clavel (professor at EPFL - École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) comes up with the brilliant idea of using parallelograms to build a parallel robot with three translational and one rotational degree of freedom. Contrary to opinions published elsewhere, his inspiration was truly original and does not come from a parallel mechanism patented by Willard L. Pollard in 1942, which at that time was not known to Professor Clavel. The latter calls his creation the Delta robot, without suspecting that at the turn of the century, it will establish itself as one of the most successful parallel robot designs, with several hundred active robots worldwide. In 1999, Dr. Clavel is presented with the Golden Robot Award, sponsored by ABB Flexible Automation, for his innovative work on the Delta parallel robot.