Industrial robots and their human counterparts
Cobots have come a long way over the past decade. With safety in mind, these robots work right alongside their human counterparts. These cobots are capable of handling the heavy lifting for humans, allowing them to focus on the more mental workload. For example, at Amazon, cobots are used to move product to pickers rather than the picker going to the shelf, pulling the product, and returning to their station. This saves the worker time, steps, and possibly a lot of heavy lifting. The cobot saves the worker’s energy and reduces the wear and tear on their bodies daily.
But how do we ensure human safety around cobots? Great question. Today’s safety standards for cobots are exceptionally stringent, as they should be. There are numerous safety features on cobots as defined by ISO/TS 15066, which provides guidelines for the design and implementation of collaborative workspaces.
This enables shop managers and manufacturers to safely
incorporate cobots into overlapping workspaces between humans and their mechanical counterparts. Some examples: ■ Maximum Allowable Speed. This is set at the point of the EOAT (End-of-arm-tooling).
Cobots have come a long way over the past decade. With safety in mind, these robots work right alongside their human counterparts
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