Collaborative Robots drive growth in global robotics industry

Global sales of robots are set to double in the 4 years to 2018. So says a report delivered in Frankfurt by the International Federation of Robotics. And one of the key factors behind this rapid growth is the advent of collaborative robots technology, or Cobots as they are sometimes nicknamed.

Enrico Krog Iversen the CEO of Universal Robot (UR), the market leader in Collaborative robots says “We entered the market with the world’s first collaborative robot in the midst of the economic crisis of 2009 and our timing was right. The new generation of robots created a paradigm shift within manufacturing industry looking for new ways to optimise and improve production processes in order to compete on a global scale”.

Keeping up with global competition is a challenge faced not only by large enterprises, but also small and medium sized manufacturers (SME’S). So the introduction of low cost automation in the form of Cobots has made automation accessible to all. Characterised by their ease of use, flexible deployment, human-robot-collaboration and fast payback, this new kind of robot is attractive no matter the size of the operation.

SME’s are the manufacturers who can reap the most significant benefits from Cobots and they represent a huge untapped market. Iversen comments “Our range of robots are the kind of co-workers they need to optimise and automate time wasting tasks and bottlenecks in their production flow.

Large manufacturers also find our robots beneficial; as a supplement to their traditional industrial robots. At the same time the reshoring trend in the industry has increased demand from local manufacturers. The full potential of the global market for Cobots is very far from being realised yet”.

The latest release from UR is the UR3 table-top robot and in less than 12 months this has become a top seller in the range. The electronics and metal industries in particular, have embraced this smaller robot, which can be regarded as much as a power tool than standard automation.

RNA are distributors of the UR range of robots in the UK.

Link: RNA Collaborative Robots