
Collective Robotics and Its Most Common Applications
The most common collaborative robot applications can be narrowed down to six, namely, pick and place, machine tending, packaging and palletizing, process tasks, finishing tasks, and quality inspection.
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CIO Applications Europe | Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The most common collaborative robot applications can be narrowed down to six, namely, pick and place, machine tending, packaging and palletizing, process tasks, finishing tasks, and quality inspection.
Fremont, CA: Over the last decade, the field of collaborative robotics has rapidly expanded and become one of the fastest growing global industrial robotics market segments. Collective robots are robots with the ability to work alongside human workers to complete a task safely. The accessibility to the technology is highlighted by the ease of deployment, which is integral to the definition of a collaborative robot. The most common collaborative robot applications can be narrowed down to six, namely, pick and place, machine tending, packaging and palletizing, process tasks, finishing tasks, and quality inspection.
These robots that can operate alongside and interact with co-workers open up a plethora of opportunities for task automation. However, most of these possibilities go unfulfilled if the robot system involves a sophisticated program that is unaffordable and flexible enough to be re-deployed to different tasks on short notice. Collaborative robotics is now being deployed in many applications across various industries globally. Here are some insights into the most common collaborative robot applications.
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Pick and Place Collaborative Robots
Pick and place collaborative robots are required to pick up a workpiece and place it into another location and or orientation. The handling of each of these work pieces is as crucial as any other process. In a simple layout, products will be presented to the robot in a uniform layout tray or pallet or on a conveyor belt in a predictable fashion. In more complex cases, a vision system is used to determine product orientation. A pick-and-place task is an excellent first collaborative robot automation application because of its highly repetitive nature and simple movements make set up easy.
Machine Tending Collaborative Robots
Machine tending collaborative robots are another common application task gaining popularity. Some machines that require tending include computer-numerical control (CNC) machines, injection molding machines, laser engravers, and metal-stamping presses. The robots involve picking up an unprocessed clank product from a tray, stack, conveyor, or other feeder configuration, and place it into a fixed location in a machine. Once the machine cycle is completed, the robot removes the finished part and places another blank. If a machine cycle is long enough, these robots can work on more than one machine simultaneously, increasing Return on Investment (ROI). Also, these robots require minimal space, allowing workers to move around an interfere if any manual adjustments are needed.
Packaging and Palletizing Collaborative Robots
Once the manufacturing process of a product is finished, it needs to be packed before it can be shipped out of the factory. Packaging and palletizing tasks could involve packaging a product by placing it into a shrink-wrapping machine, picking packaged products from a conveyor and collating them into boxes, or placing these boxes onto a pallet for shipping. Rigid products that arrive in a fixed orientation are simple to handle. With the help of a simple vision system, the robots can also detect parts' orientation when not uniform.
See Also: Top Robotics Solution Companies
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