What is the market demand for collaborative robots?

The working environment of traditional robots does not require human involvement, and robots can complete tasks independently. Therefore, safety when being with humans is not the key point in the development of robots, and it is generally necessary to use fences to separate robots from humans.

With the rise of labor costs, many industries that have never or rarely used robots before are looking for robot automation solutions, such as 3C, pharmaceutical, food, logistics and other industries. The characteristics of these emerging industries are a wide variety of products, generally small in size, and high demands for flexibility from operators. Traditional robots are difficult to provide satisfactory performance solutions under controllable costs, so human-machine integration is naturally considered.

Humans are responsible for processes that require high flexibility, touch, and agility, while robots utilize their fast and accurate characteristics to handle repetitive work. But if they want to cooperate, the fence between them is too inconvenient. At this point, it is necessary to ensure that robots and humans can work safely in the same area, which requires robots to have the characteristic of safe cooperation.

The advantages of collaborative robots can be summarized as: safety, low cost, and easy to use. It can be plug and play in most situations, which is very suitable for the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises. However, collaborative robots are not omnipotent. It is just a new subcategory in the existing robot product line, with many advantages that traditional robots cannot match, but also many disadvantages. For example, in order to reduce the losses caused by collisions, the speed and weight of robots must be limited within a certain range. Therefore, collaborative robots generally have slow speeds, low loads, and low gravity, resulting in much lower stiffness than traditional robots. The repeatability accuracy is also one order of magnitude lower than that of traditional general-purpose robots.

Essentially, collaborative robots are not much different from traditional robots, but rather industrial robot products based on different market positioning. Or perhaps they are not the same thing. In traditional robot production lines, robots are an integral part of the entire production line and are difficult to separate. If a robot in a certain link malfunctions, it may cause the entire production line to shut down without a backup design. However, collaborative robots are highly independent and can replace humans, with the two being interchangeable. If a collaborative robot breaks down, it is recommended to move it away and find someone to replace it. The flexibility of the entire production process is very high.

At present, the market demand for collaborative robots is not very high, mainly used by large high-tech or manufacturing enterprises. Of course, considering the continuous development of technology, we may also see many small and medium-sized enterprises using collaborative robots in the future.