This year, technological innovations have continued to surprise us in the industrial sector. So many solutions have been developed in Automation and Robotics that many parts of the dangerous and tedious tasks in production lines have been covered, allowing the staff to educate themselves in order to carry out other roles.
One of the leading trends this year are the so-called collaborative robots (cobots), robotic solutions that obtain greater profitability in a sustainable way with more flexible options for applications such as material handling, assembly, inspection and testing, welding, painting and dispensing, allowing for the optimal control of force, easy and simple configuration, integrated mechanical, vision and control functions, and better cloud-based support. And they can also be equipped with a variety of end tools and accessories such as tweezers (electromechanical, mechanical, vacuum, heads (aerosol paint, welding) etc. They can share the workspace with humans because they have been designed for this purpose, their programming is easy to understand, their installation is fast, flexible and intuitive, and the most important reason for acquiring collaborative robots is their quick return on investment.
Some of their innovations include:
Fanuc CR that can handle heavier loads safely at higher speeds from 5 to 35 kg.
Epson Robots with the T3 SCARA series by Epson with a 3 kg load capacity and 400 mm arm reach. SCARA Synthis T6 series, payload of up to 6 kg and an arm reach of 600 mm.
Yaskawa Motoman is characterized by offering a wide range of collaborative robots, integrating easy-to-use programming tools for industrial and collaborative robots.
Universal Robots is characterized by incorporating force sensors that can be used to perform inspection processes or detect the product accurately.
ABB is characterized by its SafeMove2 safety software, which can convert any connected industrial robot into a collaborative robot, with the Omin Core series of controllers.
Analysts of the collaborative robots market forecast an increase of these cobots in the market from USD 710 million in 2018 to 12.3 billion for 2025, at a CAGR of 50.31%. A global market analysis observed that the increase in the adoption of collaborative robots has a common factor, which is the load capacity of between 5 and 10 kg, as a result of them being safer for the majority of a factory’s automation tasks.
For this year, those brands that remained competitive in the collaborative robot market are: Universal Robots A / S (Denmark), Rethink Robotics (United States), ABB (Switzerland), KUKA AG (Germany), FANUC Corporation (Japan), Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany), MRK- Systeme GmbH (Germany), Precise Automation, Inc. (United States), Energid Technologies Corporation (United States), F&P Robotics AG (Switzerland), MABI AG (Switzerland), Techman Robot de Quanta Storage, Inc. (Taiwan), Franka Emika GmbH (Germany), AUBO Robotics Inc. (United States), YASKAWA Electric Corporation (Japan), Comau SpA (Italy) y KAWADA Robotics Corp. (Japan).
Collaborative robots or “cobots” are becoming a complement to the industry of the future by providing important data that will optimize efficiency and safety in industrial processes, thus improving the quality and reliability of companies.