Why do you need collaborative robots?

Collaborative robots are just a very important subcategory in theentire industrial robot industry chain. They have their own unique advantages. The rise of collaborative robots means that traditional robots must have some degree of deficiencies be unable to adapt to new market demands.

To sum up, there are four main points:

1. Traditional robots have high deployment costs

In fact, relatively speaking, the price of industrial robots is high. Depending on the load capacity, the price range is ￥100,000~￥400,000. Traditional robots are expensive because of their deployment costs, which rely on their very high repeatability (general robots can achieve less than 0.02mm). Robots are difficult to use, only trained professionals can skillfully use robots to complete configuration, programming maintenance work.

If there are many robots, in most cases the original production line needs to be renovated even rebuilt, which only requires huge investment, but may also involve suspension of production for renovation. This is one of the reasons why many factories are reluctant to use robots. In short, a single robot cannot be used directly on the factory production line, it also requires the support of a lot of peripheral equipment. Although the robot itself is a highly flexible flexible device, the entire production line is . Once the production line is changed, the cost is very high.

Seven-axis lightCollaborative Robotic Arm

2. Unable to meet the needs of small medium-sized enterprises

Small medium-sized enterprises are the main customers of the emerging robot market. Traditional industrial robots cannot meet the needs of SMEs. The target market of traditional industrial robots is enterprises that can carry out large-scale production.

The automotive industry is a typical example of mass production. The world's first industrial robot was deployed in a General Motors factory to handle stamping parts. However, small medium-sized enterprises are different. Their products are generally characterized by small batches, customization, short cycles. They do have much money to carry out large-scale transformation of production lines are more sensitive to product ROI.

Some emerging industries are characterized by a wide variety of products, generally small size, high requirements for operator dexterity. Existing robots are difficult to provide satisfactory performance solutions while keeping costs under control, so what should we do?

If robots are good enough, people can help. We combine humans machines. Humans are responsible for processes that require high flexibility, touch, agility, while robots use their speed accuracy to take on repetitive tasks.

3. The origin of collaborative robots

To accurately define collaborative robots, let’s first look at two terms. A collaborative area refers to an area robots humans can work simultaneously, a collaborative robot refers to a robot that is designed to interact directly with humans in a collaborative area.

As mentioned earlier, small medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a very important customer group for collaborative robots, the rise of collaborative robots is also closely related to SMEs.

After UR Rethink, a large number of newly established collaborative robot companies have grown up, there are more more collaborative products on the market. The concept of collaborative robots has gradually been recognized accepted by everyone.

Carbon fiber seven-axis modular collaborative robot arm

4. What is the difference between collaborative robots traditional robots?

In essence, there is a huge difference between collaborative robots traditional robots. They are just industrial robot products produced based on different design concepts. In the early stages of the development of collaborative robots, many of them were modified based on traditional robots.

If we have to find a difference, one difference is that the two robots are targeting different target markets. This has been explained before I will repeat it here.

The second difference is that the two replace different objects. The automation transformation based on traditional robots replaces production lines with production lines. As an integral part of the entire production line, robots are difficult to take out separately. If a robot in a certain link breaks down, the entire production line may have to stop working without a backup design. Collaborative robots are highly independent replace individual people. The two can be interchangeable. If a collaborative robot breaks down, just move it away find someone else to replace it. The flexibility of the entire production process is very high.