In today's processing equipment, automation applications often require powerful robots . That is, robots with high loads and high speeds are usually fixed in one place and need to operate behind a security fence. By contrast, collaborative robots (Cobots) are designed to be easily deployed to work with humans, but this often limits their payload and speed, limiting the efficiency of processing operations.
However, cobots are coming, specifically, they are increasingly used in CNC machining applications. Cobot technology is evolving, and manufacturing trends favor its wider adoption. To better understand cobots, we've compiled 10 questions about cobots:
1. Machine vision and AI drive the adoption of Cobots
Machine vision, coupled with artificial intelligence, will address key challenges facing robots, especially collaborative robots. One is that the gripper or end-effector in a robot application is a complex component that often needs to be customized to suit its job task. Collaborative robots are even more problematic because end-effectors can pose security concerns that undermine the robot's ability to cooperate. However, the combination of vision and artificial intelligence promises to enable a robot to analyse the shape of an object so that it can grasp it with only a universal gripper. After all, that's what we humans do: we use vision plus intelligence to guide our own hand, which has a wide range of uses.
Powerful interests are helping to push the technology forward. In its warehouse application, the warehouse robot can grasp various objects quickly and accurately with a single invariable grabber.
2. Cobots cannot guarantee safety
As we all know, the robot end-effector is a component, which may cause security risks and weaken the cooperative nature of cooperative robots. P&g robotics leader Robert Bollinger helped develop a CoBot-based tray system that has been replicated and deployed across the company's locations. "It's not just a robot, it's a system," he noted. Ensuring operator safety in pallet systems requires not only the designation of a Concorde, but also the filling of clamps and possible contact areas, such as the elbow of the Concorde, where an operator bending down to pick up a box may hit his or her head.
3. Cobot applications do not need to collaborate
Dan Burseth, vice president of automation solutions provider Eckhart Inc., offered some insights into cobots' success today. "Cobots are cheap, easy to set up and program, and small," he said. That's usually why they use it. Safety is not a major factor, and while Cobots are designed to work safely with people, this "collaboration" generally does not reflect their success.
4. The payback period for automation is declining.
Mr Burseth also points out that, in addition to providing opportunities for low-cost automation, the falling price of cobots has made their application more economical. At the same time, wages for manufacturing workers increased. Together, these initiatives make Cobot automation more attractive by shortening the payback period.
5. Manufacturing trends favor collaboration
Patrick Sobalvarro of Veo Robotics disagrees. He points out that the increasing incidence of design and product changes in manufacturing means that some automation applications will never be able to return from just one product. Therefore, automation needs to be redeployable, and automation solutions need to collaborate when processes change so frequently that human involvement is required. The trend toward mass customization and faster product cycles favors cobots, and these trends are probably the main reasons for more cobots.
6. The adoption of Cobot may be hampered by a lack of personnel
Another point from Mr Burseth: although we often think of a lack of talent as a handicap to the push for automation, there may be a long way to go for Cobots. This type of automation is still a new concept for many manufacturers, and today's manufacturing facilities lack the talent to explore new concepts effectively. Therefore, the application of cooperative robots is hindered. To explore and overcome collaborative robotics, it turns out, a talent shortage needs to be addressed.
7. Promote AGV technology to make CoBOTS mobile
Limor Schweitzer, founder of MOV. ai, discusses various technological advances affecting autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs). He points out that more precise rotary actuators enable these devices to achieve precise physical positioning. Augmented reality related to inferring 3D space has the side benefit of addressing AGV navigation challenges, with better wireless data speeds enabling better control. These performance improvements make the AGV an assembly platform for the CoBOT, he notes. His company expects the idea to spread. Mov. Ai's product is a third-party software operating system for mobile Cobots that can offer them more cheaply.
8. Action is coming
Eyeware is dedicated to automated behavior recognition. The visual system, which uses eye tracking, can measure intent by inferring what a person is looking at. So in the future, automation may be able to answer the ambiguous question, "What is that?" Because it knows what the speaker is looking at. Applied to manufacturing, attention recognition could help cooperative robots be more collaborative, allowing them to predict the next move of a human worker and pre-locate the parts or tools that the human will need next.
9. Collaboration can be done in different ways
When I imagine a cobot, I think of a force -- and a robot with limited speed -- a robot that moves with too little force to hurt me, and if it makes contact with me, the robot will stop. However, there is another way to cooperate. The aforementioned Veo robot is developing technology for speed and separation monitoring. The combination of vision and artificial intelligence (back to point 1) produces a system that can identify people approaching the robot, work out the potential for human contact with the robot, and slow or stop the robot as needed. With this system, robots can be fast and powerful, but still need to collaborate. We will no longer think of cooperative robots as weak.
10. "Collaboration" may be a bigger idea
As Veo's Schweitzer points out, speed and separation monitoring through vision and ARTIFICIAL intelligence is a bigger idea than robotics. Any programming machine might collaborate in this way. At some point, the continued advances in collaborative robotics will allow us to go beyond robots to achieve automation worldwide.
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