Collaborative robotics as a great opportunity in industrial automation

Industry is currently going through a transformation process in which sterling challenges have to be properly assessed and considered to ensure business works more quickly, safely and efficiently. Automatization could be crucial here, turning collaborative robots (or cobots) into business partners that help to boost productivity and business quality.

Ángel Cristóbal Lázaro, Business Partner and Expert in Enabling Technologies of GMV’s Secure e-Solutions sector, took part in the second session of lectures organized by enerTIC on technologies applied to Industry 4.0 energy efficiency, explaining how collaborative robotics and new development models can help to make industry more efficient. His paper kicked off by stressing automation as a key technology in bringing back production to developed countries (reshoring), as well as reflecting cobot’s advantages over traditional robotics.

The rapid advance of collaborative robotics and its integration with new development models based on IoT, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence, in combination with other disruptive technology, are bound to change the industrial environment for good, acting as catalyst to favor Industry 4.0 and the connection between machines, tools, systems and even component parts, maximizing efficiency and coming up with a quick and fleet-footed response. These new development models open up a whole range of opportunities for industries like process mining, predictive maintenance, simulation, cloud robotics, artificial vision, machine learning, route optimization and many more brought out in Cristóbal Lázaro’s speech.

Drawing on their hallmark lightness, flexibility and precision, collaborative robots are especially designed to work shoulder to shoulder with humans in a shared workspace without any need to set up safety measures (they come fitted with modern sensors that immobilize the procedure on the least contact). Their smallness and flexibility differentiate them from traditional industrial robots and make them ideal for any type of company regardless of its size. The initial outlay is soon recouped; they call for no specialist assembly technicians or any sort of specific training; they can be reset and installed simply to work on various production tasks and allow companies to boost productivity.

As for energy efficiency, cobots need no rest or downtime and can carry out tasks nonstop and more quickly; they are capable of producing more in less time, using up less energy. Application of Artificial Intelligence techniques like algorithms deployed in Cloud Computing platforms can generate a whole host of scenarios that maximize process parameters such as energy consumption or component part wear, helping to shorten the investment breakeven period. Moreover, the accuracy of these devices means a big reduction in the material and energy wastage rate during production.

We at GMV have been working on new development models that help to drive Industry 4.0, applying DevOps to collaborative robotics with the aim of meeting our clients’ needs and driving the industrial sector unstoppably towards the digital transformation.