About Collaborative Robotics
Collaborative Robotics is concerned with the development of robots that operate in spaces shared with people, interacting with us physically and socially in support of human needs and goals.
The field is expected to transform the way we live and work, enabling the combination of our uniquely human skills (for example our perceptual and cognitive abilities), with those of the robot (such as their precision and repeatability).
Applications for collaborative robotics are emerging in domains including manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and infrastructure maintenance, where robots can be deployed to assist human users.
Particular opportunities arise where the complexity of the environment or task would cause problems for a purely autonomous robot; the ‘semi-autonomous’ approach allowing us to overcome some of the limitations of robots by augmenting them with our own abilities. For example, robots often fail when placed in the types of novel and unpredictable situations that people deal with on a daily basis; by working together we can guide the robot through such issues, in return using robots to undertake tasks to which we are less suited (such as the dangerous, dull, and physically demanding.
In the manufacturing sector, for example, collaborative robotics can be used to augment manual processes that are not suitable for full automation (this might be because they are low-volume, highly variable, or require a high degree of dexterity or skill to perform), but where there are some repetitive, dangerous, or high-precision elements.
Potential benefits include improved worker safety and wellbeing, increased process flexibility (smaller batch sizes and more bespoke products), a reduction in fixed physical infrastructure (such as cages), increased productivity, and reduced waste.