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Collaborative Robotics: Machines that Work Alongside Humans
Robotic manufacturers are building a new generation of industrial robots, robots that are more capable of working side by side with humans. These new robots are called ‘cobots‘ or collaborative robots. Cobots are designed to work at a slower speed and of lower force than their human partners. They’re typically safer, easier-to-use and more flexible than the previous generation of robots. A key advantage of cobots is that they’re able to work in environments where robots did not do well previously, and the teaming of robots with humans is allowing some tasks to be automated that never have been automated before.
Olaf Kramm, general manager at Fanuc Germany, said that “collaboration is already a revolution. The fencing we had around robots was a show-stopper. But that was for safety reasons; now we’re talking about industry 4.0 — a smart factory with no borders, where robots and humans work alongside another.”
Jim Lawton, Rethink Robotics chief marketing officer, said that “environments need to be built so the robot and the worker can be in the same space safely”.
Safety has been an issue that has needed to be solved in order to realize collaborative robotics. Four possible measures that are considered in the design of robots that will work alongside of humans include:
Stopped state monitoring – the robot stops working when a human comes in range and will not restart until the human leaves
Speed and separation monitoring – the robot’s speed of work slows significantly as a human approaches and may stop if a human gets too close
Hand guiding – the robot slows when a human is present and training the robot by hand
Power and force limiting – the robot is run with low power and force so that there is little chance to inflict injury
Gregg Panek, owner of Panek Precision, said that “having the robots has allowed us to move our existing workers into more useful tasks.”
