AdvancedManufacturing.org
of 3 kg, ideal for companies that are short on space. The largest model, the UR10, can automate tasks up to 10 kg, with a reach radius of 1300 mm. All robots feature six axes of rotation, easy program- ming, and a typical installation time of half a day or less. UR also boasts an average ROI of six months.
turing jobs,” he said. Instead, manufacturers are turning to collaborative robots. “If you need an efficient operation, and you can’t take
“NOW, WE CAN AUTOMATE JOBS WE COULDN’T IN THE PAST, AND MANUFACTURERS CAN RUN AN EFFICIENT OPERATION.... NOW YOU HAVE A PLANT THAT CAN COMPETE, AND YOU CAN DO IT IN A WAY THAT STILL ALLOWS PEOPLE TO EARN GOOD WAGES.”
Rethink Robotics (Boston, MA), maker of the Baxter and
Sawyer robots, takes a similar approach in helping small and medium manufacturers stay ahead of the competition. “The challenges have historically been, manufacturers
want efficiency and productivity—and that worked when they were making 10 million of one thing,” said Jim Law- ton, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Rethink Robot- ics. “But if I’m a small or medium manufacturer, I don’t make ten million of anything – how do I benefit from automation? I want efficiency and productivity, but not if I lose flexibility.” Rethink’s Baxter and Sawyer robots don’t miss a beat
when working in an environment with frequent line turn- overs or inconsistent part presentation. The company’s Robot Positioning System allows for redeployment with- out retraining, as the robot uses its vision-sensing system to recognize special Landmarks—stickers similar to QR codes—and couples itself to the work cell. Along with what stands in for eyes, the cobots are equipped with tablets for “faces”—complete with images for eyes and eyebrows that show expressions. “With decreased sensor prices and decreased computa-
tional prices, we should be able to drive efficiency and get flexibility,” Lawton said. “We should be able to have our cake and eat it, too.”
Helping with the reshoring trend Lawton’s a big believer in the idea that automation—espe-
cially collaborative robots—can help drive reshoring as well. “Low-cost labor models have largely run their course,” he said. Outsourcing to China is no longer financially vi- able, as Chinese manufacturing wages are on the rise. In the US, unfortunately, “not a lot of people want manufac-
advantage of traditional automation, you need people to take on all the jobs—even the dull, dangerous ones—and you have no choice but to chase the cheap labor,” he explained. “But now, we can automate jobs we couldn’t in the past, and manu- facturers can run an efficient operation where they couldn’t before. Now you have a plant that can compete, and you can do it in a way that still allows people to earn good wages.” BCG Research predicts that by 2025, adoption of advanced robots will boost
productivity by up to 30% in many industries and lower total labor costs by 18% or more in the US, China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other countries.
Factories of the future There’s a lot of buzz about Factories of the Future,
Smart Factories and the Internet of Things. While it’s not yet clear exactly how robots will fit in to these scenarios, it’s clear they will have a place at the table. In the 2015 World Robot Statistics Report, from the In-
ternational Federation of Robotics (IFR), experts predicted global industrial robotics sales would grow 15% per year by 2018, with the US, China, Germany, Japan and South Korea as the top markets, representing 70% of total sales. As for what these robots will look like and how they
will behave, the future is a little clearer. Manufacturers are already working on technologies that will allow the robot to use vision sensors to learn from visual and voice com- mands. Learning from and adapting to its environment is another challenge, because, as Lawton said, most robots still have limitations. “They’re ‘dumb’ in that they do what you tell them to do,” he said. “They execute what they’ve been programmed to execute.” Robots will become more adaptable, he said. They’ll
learn from their own experiences and share that informa- tion with other robots. They’ll also be able to learn from content that exists in the cloud. “The convergence of all of these technologies is go-
ing to be extremely powerful,” Lawton said. “We know there’s something there. We have some inkling of what it will look like. And the winners will be the ones who figure it out sooner, and the losers will be the companies that go out of business.”
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Spring 2016
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