A cobot (or collaborative robot) is a robot made to interact with a human operator within a shared space. We can already see the first big difference, which is the possibility for cobots to work with human operators in complete safety, without the need of being separated or shielded by a safety barrier.
COBOTs: collaborative robots
From their first appearance, many industries integrated these robotic systems almost immediately, in particular to be used for the most repetitive operations. One main benefit of cobots and robots is their ability to carry out the same task and movements whilst maintaining the maximum accuracy. With margins of error near to the tenth of a millimiter, cobots are the ideal choice for delicate and difficult tasks that can take a lot of time and energy to a human operator. Contrary to what one may think, cobots are not made to completely take on the role of human operators on production lines. In fact, cobots were invented to help humans in all those tasks deemed too hazardous, heavy and repetitive, creating a safer working environment.
Speaking of human-robot cooperation, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) outlined four levels of cooperation:
- Coexistence: human operator and robot work together, with no barriers to separate them, but without sharing the same working space;
- Sequential Collaboration: both subjects work in a shared space, but their tasks are sequential to one another, meaning they don’t work on the same item simultaneously;
- Cooperation: robot and operator work simultaneously on the same item;
- Reactive Collaboration: the cobot reacts to the movements of the human operator.
Collaborative robots today
Collaborative robots are experiencing a constant growth and are more and more used in many industrial processes, thanks not only to their accuracy, but also to the benefits they bring to the operators’ health.
The EU, in its first guide lines for Industry 5.0, included the use of cobot systems for all those operations that can be considered too hazardous for the workers’ health. Does this mean that human operators will disappear from production lines? Not at all. The directives for the use and implementation of cobots state that both humans and cobots will work together in their tasks, just like we wrote in the previous paragraph.
