Collaborative robots are now a hot topic in the robot category. Basically, a collaborative robot is a type of robot that can work with people. It’s no wonder that it’s flexible and has received a lot of attention. Specifically, it is roughly divided into the following four types. “Stop under safety monitoring”, “Speed ​​and separation”, “Force limit”, “Hand guide”.

[Stop under safety monitoring] Collaborative robots classified in this category assume a situation where the interaction between the robot and a human worker is minimized. In other words, even though it is a collaborative robot, we do not expect people to come close to us. In general, this type of collaborative robot is designed to stop working when a human enters the work area. Sensors make this possible. For example, it is generally mounted on an industrial robot. This will prevent accidents from occurring.

[Speed ​​and Separation] This type of collaborative robot is similar to a collaborative robot for safety monitoring and stopping in that it is “common in industrial robots”. However, this collaborative robot is usually equipped with a more sophisticated vision system. Simply put, it’s not just the difference between running and stopping, it slows down when a human approaches the robot and stops it completely when the human gets too close to the robot. It features gradual movement.

[Force Limitation] This type of collaborative robot has rounded corners, and an intelligent collision sensor quickly detects the possibility of contact with a human worker and stops the operation. In addition, it is typically equipped with a robot arm, and this type of collaborative robot can limit how to apply force so that it will not be injured even if it comes into contact.

[Hand guide] A hand guide means that you can operate the arm part. This type of collaborative robot is equipped with a hand guide function that allows the operator to directly control the movement of the robot in automatic mode. In the automatic mode, the robot that cooperates with the hand guide responds only to the operation (input) of the operator. This allows, for example, the robot to support the weight of a worker when he / she is engaged in a heavy work, reducing the risk of injury due to the worker’s repetitive work. Similar functionality can be used for robot “teaching” and “programming”, but hand-guided collaborative work is done in the robot’s automatic mode, whereas programming is not done in the automatic mode and is in production. Is not used either.

Source: Plato Data Intelligence