Collaborative robots are the most popular type of robots in recent years, and according to public data, the market size of collaborative robots in China was only 126 million yuan in 2014, which has increased to 1.3 billion yuan in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate of 59.5%.
The main difference between collaborative robots and industrial robots is that the target markets of these two robots are not different. Collaborative robots are not designed to replace industrial robots, but rather their own small size, high mobility, and rich application scenarios to fill the blank areas in industrial automation, mainly serving non-standard scenarios in the industrial field. Moreover, the flexibility of collaborative robots is much stronger than that of industrial robots, and they are more flexible in the production process, which can replace people to complete some work that industrial robots cannot do.
In addition, the operation threshold of collaborative robots is relatively low, which does not require long learning cost, and the programming and operating system is simpler and more concise, and the safety factor is also higher.
However, compared to industrial robots, there is still a significant performance disadvantage. To ensure safety, collaborative robots control forces and collision capabilities, thus leading to slower operation, usually only one-third to one-half the speed of traditional robots, and a disadvantage in terms of kinetic energy and load.
