The modern-day desire for efficiency through automation has spread its way into every industry. Even in the agriculture sector, unmanned ground vehicles are being considered to supplement work with crops and improve farm management.
Like smartphones and PCs, robotics began as a hardware revolution, but today, software is the force that’s reshaping the industry. Are you ready? Here are six crucial questions every company needs to ask about the software behind their robotic solutions
“The hardware innovation is still trailing behind, and most of the value related to cobots does not come from collaboration. It comes through ease-of-use, re-programmability, lower total cost compared to industrial systems, and re-deployability.
Vision systems from SICK enable flexible automation for positioning, inspection, and measurement tasks. It also promotes the use of collaborative robots or “cobots” as a means to effective and safe human-robot collaboration.
The R2000 LiDAR sensor is used for navigation, monitoring the AGV’s surroundings with a 360° scan angle, and providing high accuracy measurements to the AGV controller.
While the popular view of robots may be car assembly, in fact, 90 percent of manufacturing today is not automated and takes place in small and medium size companies.
Three mobile robots from Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) are helping Honeywell Safety & Productivity Solutions keep its manufacturing processes lean and agile and optimizing workflows by automating the transfer of materials throughout the facility.
Insurance companies already employ 17% of all commercial drones. Drones can play a part in all the stages of the insurance lifecycle, especially claims management and fraud prevention.
Piab’s Kenos KCS gripper enables a collaborative robot to handle just about anything at any time. Combining Piab's proprietary air-driven COAX vacuum technology with an easily replaceable technical foam that molds itself around any surface or shape, the gripper can be used to safely grip, lift and handle any object. Standard interface (ISO) adapters enable the whole unit to be attached to any cobot type on the market with a body made in a lightweight 3D printed material. Approved by Universal Robots as a UR+ end effector.
The role of robots is increasing in the automation of business processes. Robots are even touching human life and are also being used in customer-facing roles.
As it is clear that industrial robotics would continue to transform every sector in several ways, here are some of the prominent trends that would play a vital role in the coming years.
Each of the four types of collaborative robot operation permit varying amounts of interaction between people and robots. Based on the risk assessment, each type will also allow you to remove a portion or all of the safety fencing.
The traditional vision architecture is changing, with an evolution from cameras and sensors to networked and smart-enabled, compact embedded devices with the processing power required for real-time analysis.
The good news is that space-based exploration, travel and research are all ramping up not just at renowned organizations like NASA, but also at privatized operations such as Space-X and Made In Space.
The challenge is that traditional robots have been designed to perform a single task extremely efficiently. But when the item or the task changes these traditional machines need to be reintegrated and reprogrammed.