GMV has recently bought a UR-5 robot arm from Universal Robots, a Danish co-bot manufacturer and world leader in this technology. UR-5 is one of the best robot arms in the field of co-bots (collaborative robots that help human workers carry out manual tasks); it can handle payloads of up to 5 kg and has a working radius of 850 mm thanks to its 6 articulation points.

Cobots already account for 5% of the robotics market and are now considered to be one of the areas with the best growth prospects. Sales are forecast to grow from the current figure of US$ 100 million to more than US$ 1 billion by 2020. The reason behind their success is their great flexibility at lower cost than traditional industrial robots (such as KUKA robots, used for some years now in GMV’s ©Platform-Art testbed for path validation and verification in the space sector). They can also work collaboratively alongside humans, making these robots more attractive and efficient for industries of all types, big and small. They would almost be plug-and-play systems, easily "trainable" for a given task. Some firms are even beginning to hire them for partial substitution of human workers.

The robot acquired by GMV is being currently used for the MBZIRC Robotics Challenge, a project in which GMV is participating withing the Al-Robotics team.

Once more GMV is acting as a system integrator and solution provider, including inhouse items of both hardware and software. This function is a crucial part of any robot system value chain. When they arrive from the manufacturer robots are capable only of basic movements. Part of GMV’s challenge is therefore to add on this algorithmic intelligence to ensure that tasks can then be carried out with greater quality and efficiency, thus increasing customer satisfaction.