COBOTS: THE FUTURE OF HUMAN-ROBOT COLLABORATION

Human Friendly Robots To Become an Increasingly Common Sight in Manufacturing

In our most recent quarterly e-magazine, read our special feature on cobots and how they are bringing true human-robot collaboration to the factory floor. We spoke to Jose Saenz, project coordinator for the European collaborative industrial robotics project known as VALERI. The project “was set up to develop autonomously operating robots for the aerospace industry, which has not been a heavy user of robots in the past, partly because they do not mass produce at the same level as the automotive industry does.” We also look at two different approaches to creating human-friendly robots; the first adopted by companies such as Kuka, that uses expensive torque sensors to avoid injuring human colleagues, and the second implemented by Universal Robots that uses clever software instead so as to avoid the high costs associated with using the sophisticated sensors.