Collaborative Robotics

Safety First: The defining feature of cobots is their power and force limiting (PFL) capability. They are designed with rounded edges and lightweight materials to minimize impact energy.

Ease of Use: Cobots are often programmed via "lead-through" teaching, where an operator physically grabs the robot arm and moves it to the desired waypoints. This intuitive approach eliminates the need for complex coding for simple tasks.

Flexibility: Cobots are lightweight and easy to redeploy. A cobot might tend a CNC machine in the morning and perform packaging tasks in the afternoon.

Machine Tending: Loading and unloading parts from CNC mills, lathes, or injection molding machines. The human operator handles quality control while the cobot handles the repetitive loading.
Assembly: Assisting workers by holding parts in place or applying adhesives and screws.
Quality Inspection: Using cameras to inspect parts from multiple angles, ensuring consistency without operator fatigue.

As cobots become more prevalent, skills in human-robot collaboration, risk assessment, and flexible deployment are becoming highly valuable. Understanding how to redesign a workflow to leverage the strengths of both humans (dexterity, judgment) and robots (repeatability, endurance) is key.