Sensitive and secure cobots open up new areas of activity
With their integrated sensors, they make it possible to automate delicate assembly tasks in the first place – ranging from assembling automotive transmissions through to inserting rubber plugs or handling flexible parts. If unexpected contact is made, cobots, for example, reduce their speed and thus the kinetic energy to an extent that prevents injury. When people and robots can work safely together, many conventional safety precautions become superfluous. Additional costs that would normally be required for safety technology and protective fences can be dispensed with. Workers and robots can share the same workspace without any concerns. In this way, expensive feed systems and production floor space can be saved.
Man remains at the center of production
The crucial point is to achieve open communication and simple integration. This makes cobots virtuosos for modern, networked production and logistics which will link together automation solutions with services and databases within the foreseeable future. However, a factory staffed by robots alone will remain an illusion, even in the smart factory. People will remain the central focus. However, robots will make people’s jobs less arduous, will support people and give them entirely new capabilities.
With
LBR iisy and
LBR iiwa, cobots in
different payload categories, KUKA already offers
central, key technologies for a wide variety of tasks involving cooperation between humans and machines: collaborative robots, mobile assistance systems, autonomously controlled vehicles and intelligent, digitized automation solutions which reduce the burden on humans in a variety of ways.