Why The Cooperative Robot Is The Future Direction?

Cobots are robots that can work with people in the same scene. Because man-machine cooperative robots are not heavy, adaptable and plug and play, small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) need this technology very much. Some analysis shows that the cooperative robot market will grow greatly in the next few years.

Traditional robots are expensive in their deployment costs for two reasons

1. At present, industrial robots are mainly responsible for repetitive work in factories, which depends on their very high repetitive positioning accuracy and fixed external environment. In order to ensure this, in addition to the design requirements of the robot itself, the products to be processed need to be placed in a fixed position so that the robot can accurately take or perform a certain operation at the same place every time. For modern and complex assembly line operations, designing these fixed external environments for each process using robots in the whole production line requires a lot of resources, occupies a large area of valuable workshop area and several months of implementation time.

2. Robots are difficult to use. Only trained professionals can skillfully use robots to complete configuration, programming and maintenance. Ordinary users rarely have such ability.

If robots want to work with higher quality and efficiency, they must change the traditional mode. Cooperative robots of various sizes and shapes outsource soft materials through built-in sensors, in order to reduce the risk of harming humans. The biggest safety feature of man-machine cooperative robot is to add force constraints on the joints. When a collision occurs, the robot can respond quickly.

More and more service robots have man-machine cooperative design, so man-machine cooperative robots can not only work in the factories of small and medium-sized enterprises. They can also be seen in offices, homes, laboratories, warehouses, farms, sorting centers and hospitals. Of course, the current technology is still in the tasks of grinding, handling, assembly and packaging; With the opening of the market, more and more human-computer cooperative robots have been designed, and more and more applications have been developed.

Huge growth potential

The practical application shows that the efficiency of man-machine cooperation is much higher than that of man-machine separation. Similarly, collaborative processes can make better use of 85% of workers’ free time. At present, man-machine cooperative robots account for about 5% of the robot market and have a bright future. Moreover, in the non industrial field, the development trend of man-machine cooperative robot and UAV is getting better and better.

Man machine cooperative robot

Robots come to people from fixed workstations, from heavy industrial applications to assisting and increasing people’s skills. More and more companies will begin to see the trend of this change, and they will join in, or they don’t want to be eliminated. Therefore, all kinds of companies have reason to buy or invest in the robot industry to enrich the arsenal of their products and services.

In the world, universal robots have made a start. Next year, many people like abb, KUKA and Fanuc will show their new products in different fields. In the future, the competition will be more intense, the demand for man-machine cooperative robots will be more and more vigorous, and the cost will be lower and lower as the technology matures. Although human-computer cooperation is not the first choice in many places, many systems tend to be applied because of their high flexibility, ease of use and support platform.

The small and medium-sized enterprise market is huge, and almost 70% of the companies belong to the small and medium-sized enterprise market. Some low-cost plug and play robot tools will fit the production processes of these companies, so the future of cooperative robots is full of opportunities.

Cooperative robot will eventually become a transitional concept. With the development of technology, all robots in the future should have the characteristics of safe cooperative work with humans, and intrinsic safety should be the necessary and basic characteristics of an ideal robot.