FEATURE Industry 5.0
Industry 5.0: Hype or an unprecedented chance?
Yulin Wang, Technology Analyst at IDTechEx, explores the Industry 5.0 trend and its impact on the collaborative robot market
C
ollaborative robots (cobots) have gained significant momentum over the past decade. These are robots that work shoulder to shoulder with human operators, without a physical fence or cage. Thanks to this feature, operators can enter the co-working space without shutting down the entire production line, minimising downtime costs. Historically, cobots have not been as popular as industrial robots, but, recently, drivers such as Industry 5.0, smart factories and production reshoring, have accelerated their adoption.
As one of the pioneers of adopting automation in production, automotive manufacturing is by far the largest market for robots. However, one of the pain points of large automakers is that if one industrial robot malfunctions the entire production line must be closed, to ensure the safety of human operators during the inspection. This process can lead to significant downtime costs. Cobots can be the ideal solution, since human operators can efficiently and safely work next to them without affecting other robots. Audi has announced its ‘smart factory 2025’, where one of the key points is to enhance the human-robot interaction (HRI). Many other auto makers are following suit, including Volkswagen and Nissan.
Industry 4.0 vs 5.0
Industry 4.0 has been investigated for many years. However, this concept focuses on digitalisation and automation, which have risen several socio-economic questions, such as concerns over replacing human operators and the growing greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, the European Union
proposed its Horizon 2020 and Industry 5.0 plan, where HRI and reducing carbon dioxide emissions are the main topics. Other countries, too, are introduced such plans – Made in China 2025, Strategy for Denmark’s Digital Growth and A Roadmap:
34 November 2022 | Automation
From Internet to Robotics in the US.
The Industry 5.0 concept Compared with Industry 4.0, there is no significant technology evolution in automation or manufacturing when transitioning to Industry 5.0. Instead, its three main areas are: human-centric manufacturing, sustainability and business resilience. In effect, Industry 5.0 aims to bring human operators back to production and improve manufacturing sustainability. As such, there is a growing reliance on cobots. But, how exactly are they related and what benefits would cobots bring to Industry 5.0?
Human-centric manufacturing puts a high requirement for safety in production because machines work closely with human operators. Torque sensors can be used for collision detection and force control. Human operators set the values of torque sensors in advance. When a collision occurs, the values detected by sensors will exceed the pre-set range, triggering the emergency stop function. Thanks to robustness and cheapness, torque sensors are cobots’ most widely used sensory systems. However, torque sensors can only detect the torque change once a collision has happened, meaning they can’t make predictions beforehand. This is where proximity sensors work. The capacitance of the air gap between sensors and humans will change when the human operators are
in proximity to the cobotic arm. Proximity sensors are relatively expensive, and for cobots to detect human operators from every direction, many such sensors are needed, leading to higher costs, and thus reduced affordability.
Industry 5.0 main concepts Sustainability refers to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the potential negative social impacts of Industry 4.0. For example, compared with industrial robots, cobots operate at lower speed and have a
smaller footprint, leading to lower CO2 emissions.
Also, using cobots implies fewer socio-economic concerns over machines replacing humans. Finally, in terms of business resilience, due to the lingering impacts of the Covid pandemic, such as supply- chain disruption and inflation, large global corporations have started to diversify their suppliers. This can bring significant opportunities and challenges to local SMEs to increase their factory automation and match the manufacturing capacity requirements of the large companies – several have already started to install cobots in their production lines.
CONTACT:
IDTechEx
www.IDTechEx.com/Cobots
automationmagazine.co.uk
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