In this paper a procedure is proposed for a rational and optimum use of robots. It is the result of the lessons learned by the author in the course of his consultancy and teaching activities on manipulative tasks and programming capabilities of robots.

One of the chief aims of this paper is educational, and has been set on the basis of students' practice with robots in the Laboratory of Robotics at the University of Cassino, Italy. A second goal consists in highlighting and teaching how robots' versatility and flexibility can be easily exploited during robot's operation when a task is properly modelled through elementary actions. An elementary action, representing a small manipulative operation and consisting in one or few simple instructions given in robot language, can be easily performed by the robot's programming capability. Some examples have been reported to better illustrate the ideas and the procedure proposed, whose main advantage, also from an educational viewpoint, consist in providing a simpler method for analysing manipulations for robot design and programming.