INDUSTRY News
ABB adds two more cobot families to its portfolio
Last month, ABB launched two more collaborative robots (cobots) families in its portolfi o – Gofa and Swifti - complementing its 2015-launched Yumi. Now, ABB covers all three types of robot collaboration: Type 1 – hand-in-hand, operation in close proximity of human operators with its cobot Gofa; Type 2 – intermittent working alongside human operators with its Swifti; and Type 3 – when the cobot is left to operate on its own, but without any fencing, away from human operators. At their launch, Sami Atiya, President
of ABB’s Robotics & Discrete Automation Business Area, said: “This is the decade when robotics change the way we live and work. And the pace of change is accelerating – last year has been more transformative than the past 30 years! In 1974, ABB launched the fi rst microprocessor-based robot, today we have the most comprehensive portfolio of robots on the market.”
Cobots can be used in many industries,
from logistics, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, to food and beverage. In a recent survey carried out by ABB which involved over 1600 large and small businesses in Europe, the US and China, 84% plan to introduce or increase the use of robotics and automation in the next decade, with 85% citing the pandemic as a “game changer” for their business and industry. Over 40%
ABB’s Gofa cobot is
physically guided to learn its routine
of them said they are looking to robotics to improve health and safety, with 36% considering using robotic automation to improve the quality of work for their employees.
At the launch, ABB’s Atiya said that the industrial world is going through a transformative era, where consumers demand more, faster; where an ageing workforce leads to labour shortages and digitalisation takes hold. But he believes cobots will improve the nature of work. “I see robots become what PCs and mobile phones have become to us,” he said. With the help of AI, the cobots can be taught to work routines by initially being physically guided, by which they form a software program they then follow
until completing a task. It doesn’t take an extended training or an expert to use a cobot.
“Our customers tell us that it takes a month to become profi cient using our cobots, and a year to become an expert,” said Atiya from ABB’s headquarters in Switzerland.
Kitted out with MPUs and sensors, cobots can stop operating within milliseconds of coming close to a human operator, to prevent injury. Every ABB cobot installation includes a start-up package that provides ABB Ability condition monitoring and diagnostics as well as a support hotline, free for the fi rst six months to access ABB’s expert technical assistance.
Latest research underpins heat-exchanger design software
The latest research and understanding of heat transfer and thermodynamics has been used to create new software for the design of shell and tube heat exchangers, making the latest techniques and technology available to everyone from students to industrial engineers.
AHED (Advanced Heat Exchanger Design) was specifically designed to bring the latest theories and design techniques to a wide group of potential users, offering detailed product design options with the most efficient thermodynamic properties. The designers and engineers behind AHED took the opportunity
6 March 2021 | Automation
to conduct a full-scale global review of the latest scientific and commercial knowledge on relevant topics such as fluid dynamics, heat transfer and energy flows. This information was incorporated into the modelling which underlies AHED’s design engine, making it one of the most up-to-date heat-exchanger design software on the market.
“The team behind AHED has a long experience in design, manufacturing and commissioning of industrial heat exchangers. In fact, we offer an additional option where our own designers can review the designs that you have created with AHED and
verify them for you. We don’t believe that any other provider of heat- exchange software is in a position to underwrite the designs it produces like we are,” said Arnold Kleijn, AHED Software General Manager.
As well as the latest thermodynamic calculations, the AHED software includes a fluid database of more than 2,000 pure components and is applicable to a range of heat exchanger geometries (tube in tube, triple tube and multitube).
Additional design tools include
features such as vibration analysis, batch-calculations and built-in design optimisation.
automationmagazine.co.uk
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