If we believe in most articles being published about cobots, the whole idea is that they are „collaborative“- hence they are called cobots and not robots. But what exactly does that mean?
Originally they were meant to work „hand in hand“ with a human worker. Something like job sharing: while the cobot is doing repetitive work or unergonomic work, the human worker can concentrate on the high value adding work which requires experience and a certain skill set. This constant intended interaction of human and cobot is being called HRC (Human Robot Collaboration).
Nowadays cobots are also meant to be „easy to use “, which is often the case as they typically come with a more graphical interface than their industrial type of big brother. There are numerous videos on YouTube proofing that they can be „commissioned“ in less than one hour. Like setting up your new smart phone. But don’t let these videos fool you. If you really plan to operate them in close collaboration with a human worker, it’s still a long way until you have the safety approval in your hand.
But is this highest level of human robot interaction – the collaboration – really what you need? When I simply judge it from the requirements of my customers, I would say: I don’t think so! Most of the times (at least regarding applications I saw), other qualities are being needed. A typical requirement in brown field applications for example is space. Or better: dealing with non-existing space. if there is a manually operating plant which needs to be equipped with automation and especially if it is a plant with a long history, there might not be enough space for classical robot cells (although you can shrink cells really to a minimum using software fences or even classical hard Stops instead of keeping the distance between the fence and the robot). So, if this is you, you want to opt for fenceless applications. That means human interaction with the robot is not really intended – but cannot be avoided either. It’s more like peaceful co-existence: you let me do my job, I let you do yours. Next you also need to discuss speed! Cobots are rather slow, and that’s so by design!
Interaction simply means there is a crash between human and robot. So, the structure should be lightweight and of round shape, or it really hurts. Same time speed needs to be reduced so that it can be stopped before the impact gets fatal. Therefore cobots – if they are safe – cannot really handle a much higher load than 15 kg.
Now picture such a robot end of line and ask it to do fenceless palletizing. You see there is no better or worse, you simply need a robot fitting to your application and your environment. You need higher payload and maybe a bit more speed in absence of human workers? You can combine an industrial robot with a safety scanner and/or laser curtains.
So far, we have talked about collaborative applications and about fenceless requirements. Also we talked briefly about the „easy-to-use“ aspect. There is another interesting feature of (some) cobots: they have a tactile feeling which for example can be used in complex assembly processes. But again: if such an application doesn’t need to be fenceless, you always can equip your standard robot with additional force torque sensors and teach him how to be sensible (sounds like real life, right).
There is a lot to think about before making the decision which robot is the right one for your use case. Not to mention your targets are important, too. Why do you want to automate your process? Do you want to gain additional unmanned shifts? Today production companies around the globe face a massive lack of skilled labor, so maybe you want to become more independent? The lack of skilled labor is also indirectly pointing to the requirement of having an easy-to-use system. And here I say system by intention, because I believe this requirement is not limited to cobots only.
In any case, I am really eager to start a discussion with you about your experience with cobots and „classical“ industrial robots, about your ideas of using a cobot. Which concept/feature of a cobot matters most for you? Please leave a like or a comment below and I also would appreciate it if you subscribed to my newsletter. That way you will be the first to hear from my latest articles.