Why collaborative robots are the future?

At the 21st China International Industry Fair in 2019, many outstanding and famous companies from home and abroad showed off their latest products, dazzling the audience.

The exhibitions of these companies not only let the audience see various novel products, but more importantly, they revealed the development trend of the current robotics industry. At this conference, collaborative robots became the most eye-catching scenery of the exhibition. Wherever the audience went, they could see new collaborative robots launched by major foreign companies or domestic independent brands, and the application range was very wide, including automobiles, 3C, food, mechanical processing, etc.

It is not difficult to see that the development of collaborative robots has become one of the development directions of many robot companies at home and abroad. What is the reason for this phenomenon? What kind of changes will collaborative robots bring to the traditional manufacturing industry? With these questions, we interviewed Adam Sobieski, General Manager of Universal Robots Greater China. Universal Robots has long been regarded as a leader in the collaborative robot market, so Universal Robots has the best say on the above issues.

Adam Sobieski, General Manager of Universal Robots Greater China

Collaboration between humans and machines is the future trend

In 2005, Universal Robots was officially founded in Denmark. Since its inception, Universal Robots has focused on the development, production and sales of collaborative robots. Because the company believes that the collaborative work of humans and machines will be the development trend of the future equipment manufacturing industry, and collaborative robots will be the products with the most development potential in the future robotics industry.

According to Su Bikai, manufacturers in the global equipment manufacturing industry are currently facing the same problems: severe labor shortage; bottlenecks in improving productivity and efficiency; reducing production costs; reducing product defects, quality defects, and losses; and solving workshop injuries and ergonomic challenges.

In order to reduce labor costs and improve production efficiency, the introduction of industrial robots is a good choice. However, the problem with traditional industrial robots is that their installation position is fixed and they must work and operate in a protective space. In actual scenarios, since there are many assembly line workers in China and there is no place to put a safety fence, it is difficult to install. Moreover, traditional industrial robots are still potentially dangerous. Even if they are installed, they may pose a hidden danger to the personal safety of workers.

Therefore, the inability to interact with people has become a disadvantage of traditional industrial robots. On the other hand, the need for long-term investment and slow return on investment are also pain points of traditional industrial robots, because some small and medium-sized companies may not have so much money to make long-term investments.

But collaborative robots are different. They can be installed flexibly in small spaces, share workspaces with workers, and interact with people safely. The most obvious example is that when a collaborative robot touches a worker, it stops working, effectively protecting the worker's safety. When humans and robots achieve true collaborative work, it means that the advantages of both humans and machines can be brought into play, resulting in a 1+1>2 effect, and a better return on investment in a shorter time.

In addition, the advantage of collaborative robots is that they are easy to program. Regardless of whether the operator has learned robot programming, they can learn how to program collaborative robots, which can save a lot of time. At the same time, collaborative robots are also a flexible tool that can be applied to many industries. For example, in the 3C electronics industry, due to the short life cycle and variety of 3C products, the requirements for flexible manufacturing are higher, and easy-to-operate collaborative robots have become a good choice.

In short, today, companies need to face global competition pressure, improve their productivity and efficiency, and reduce production costs. Collaborative robots have become the best choice. For robot companies, this has also become the best direction for future development.

Let humans and machines work together safely

In 2018, due to the unstable economic situation, a "cold winter" hit the global robotics industry. Will this "cold winter" also have an impact on the collaborative robot field, or even Universal Robots itself?

When hearing this question, Su Bikai acted very relaxed. He believed that there would be an impact, but it would not be very big, mainly for two reasons.

First of all, improving productivity and reducing costs are the pain points that all companies around the world want to solve. Automation transformation is the general trend, and the most powerful development momentum in the automation market is collaborative robots. When the market and customers experience the benefits of collaborative robots, this development momentum will only become stronger, and capital investment will also increase.

Secondly, after more than a decade of development, Universal Robots now has business operations in 19 countries and regions, 28 offices, 65 patents, more than 700 distributors and system integrator partners, and has sold more than 37,000 Universal Robots worldwide, accounting for about 50% to 60% of the market share. Therefore, Universal Robots is confident in facing challenges.

The advantages that Universal Robots is most proud of are focus, safety, and reliability. For example, the UR16e collaborative robot, a new product that Universal Robots unveiled for the first time at this exhibition, is the best example.

UR16e collaborative robot

It is reported that UR16e is a collaborative robot that can meet the needs of handling heavy tasks efficiently and reliably. It has a payload of 16 kg, a radius of 900 mm, and a repeatability of +/- 0.05 mm. It has the advantages of rapid deployment, simple programming, and a small footprint. It is very suitable for performing some high-load automation tasks such as heavy material handling, heavy parts handling, and machine tool management.

For collaborative robots, the heavier the load, the slower it will be, because a slower speed is required to achieve safety. Therefore, during the development process, Universal Robots conducted a lot of tests on the UR16e to ensure that all aspects are optimized and balanced so that it can achieve the same safety under a larger workload. At the same time, because of the strict testing environment, Universal Robots can ensure that the products delivered to customers are reliable and will not cause any production errors or delays.

Enabling humans and machines to work together truly and safely is what Universal Robots wants to do and is doing.