Seven common application scenarios of collaborative robots

In 2017,Collaborative robots (cobots) are beginning to lead the growth of the robot market. According to research data BIS Research, by 2021, the market sales of collaborative robots will reach 150,000 units, sales are expected to increase to US$2 billion. Some industries are beginning to introduce collaborative robots as a way to seek a new automated future.

　　What makes collaborative robots stand out is that they can play a role in work areas that were previously done entirely by humans. Due to the inherent safety of collaborative robots, such as the use of force feedback collision detection, it is safe for people collaborative robots to work side by side.

　　Pick Place

　　Manual picking placing is one of the most repetitive tasks for workers today. Boring operations can easily lead to mistakes, highly repetitive physical movements can easily lead to physical fatigue injury. Using collaborative robots for pick place tasks is a good start to reduce workers' repetitive work. Pick place tasks refer to picking up workpieces placing them at another location. In actual production, this operation can be used to pick up items pallets conveyor belts for packaging sorting. Picking conveyor belts also requires advanced vision system support. Pick place collaborative robots require an end actuator to grasp objects, which can be a clamp vacuum suction cup device.

　　Equipment care

　　Equipment care requires workers to stand in front of CNC machine tools, injection molding machines other similar equipment for a long time to keep an eye on the machine's operating needs, such as replacing tools replenishing materials. This process is time-consuming extremely tedious for operators. In this case, the use of collaborative robots only liberates employees, but also one collaborative robot can maintain multiple machines, improving productivity. Care-type collaborative robots require I/O docking hardware for specific equipment. These hardware prompts the robot when to enter the next cycle of production when materials need to be replenished.

　　Packaging palletizing

　　Packaging palletizing of products is a subcategory of the pick place category. Products need to be properly prepared for transportation before they leave the factory floor, including shrink packaging, case installation loading, case sorting, pallet placement for shipment. This type of work is highly repetitive involves some small loads, making it ideal for collaborative robots to replace manual labor. Rapid product changeover is key to the business of batch production companies with mixed high low volumes. This application requires the use of conveyor tracking to synchronize the movement of the robot the conveyor. For products with inconsistent appearance, the application also needs to be combined with a vision system.

　　Processing

　　Processing is any process that requires the use of tools to manipulate workpieces. Collaborative robots are often used in gluing, dispensing, welding processes. Each of these processing tasks requires the use of tools to repeatedly complete a fixed path. If these tasks are used by new employees, they need to invest a lot of time in training to meet the requirements of the finished product. With the use of collaborative robots, programming can be completed on one robot then copied to other robots. Collaborative robots also solve the problems of accuracy repetitive operations performed by workers. Traditional welding robot systems generally require operators to have very professional knowledge of robot programming welding.

　　The advantage of the collaborative robot system is that it simplifies programming. It can be completed by simply recording the address position traditional CAD/CAM programming, which simplifies robot programming allows workers with only welding experience to complete collaborative robot programming. The use of the Polyscope interface can help maintain a stable TCP speed, ensuring that the robot can feed materials at a constant speed. In this case, the end actuator used by the robot is different depending on the type of fixed welding gun, sealant, glue, solder paste.

　　Finishing work

　　Manual finishing requires the use of hand tools is often laborious. The vibrations the tools can also cause injuries to operators. Collaborative robots can provide the force, repeatability, precision required for finishing. The types of finishing that robots can perform include polishing, grinding, deburring. Robots can be taught to perform actions by manual teaching computer programming. The force control system of collaborative robots makes the robots more durable. Finishing of parts of different sizes can be achieved through end actuators built-in force sensing devices.

　　Quality Inspection

　　Finally, collaborative robots can also perform quality inspections on parts. This process generally includes comprehensive inspection of finished parts, high-resolution image inspection of precision machined parts, comparison confirmation of parts with CAD models. Fixing multiple high-resolution cameras on collaborative robots can automate the quality inspection process quickly obtain inspection results. Using collaborative robots for inspection can obtain high-quality inspections more accurate production batches. The final actuator with a high-resolution camera, a visual system, software are required to complete the inspection.