Published on the 04/10/2016 | Written by Newsdesk
‘Cobots’ the hottest growth segment in industrial automation…
Compact, user-friendly collaborative robots are set to become a key driver in the automation market. That’s according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and its World Robotics Report 2016.
On receiving this exciting news, our first thought was ‘just what is a ‘cobot’?’ Turns out this question is a good place to start. Cobots are, evidently, robots which are designed to work with people occasionally entering their field of operation, or working directly with them. Here’s a blog which explains it in more detail.
Just recently, the concept of uncanny valley zoomed onto the radar, albeit in a slightly different context, with machine learning and BI threatening to provide insights so good that they could cause a chill up the spine. Cobots might be taking their own trip into that valley, working collaboratively alongside people to accelerate production performance.
IFR’s report predicts the worldwide annual sales of industrial robots to increase by at least 13 percent on average per year from 2017 to 2019. Human-robot collaboration, said IFR, will have a breakthrough in this period, enabling robots and humans to work safely side-by-side without any fences, while increasing production efficiency and quality.
In Australia and the Asia region in particular, strong, continued robot growth is forecasted by IFR, with the recent report suggesting a rise of 18 percent in robot supplies this year, while installations are expected to rise by 15 percent. However, China is predicted to remain the main driver of robot growth, expanding its dominance with almost 40 percent of the global robot supply being installed in China by 2019.
In a statement, chief commercial officer of Universal Robots Daniel Friis said cobots are being used to optimise product quality and automate repetitive tasks that many manufacturers have difficulty staffing with manual labour.
According to Friis, the demand for consumer goods across global markets is pushing manufacturers to produce innovative, high-quality products more quickly, consistently, and sustainably around the world.
Those keen to get into a dash of robotics can do so thanks to Universal Robots’s UR Academy, which includes free e-learning modules available that make up the basic programming training for its robots.
“The Academy offers an instrumental tool in helping us educate the market on how our technology can address key business challenges. As Australia faces widening skills gaps reported across the agricultural, manufacturing and medical technology industries, educating future operators and programmers now to bridge this gap becomes even more important,” said Friis.
Check out The World Robotics Report 2016.
