From the manufacturer’s point of view, we do not agree with the low-price substitution logic. Relying on a simple price war and low price strategy can not promote the continuous expansion of the scale of the collaborative robot market, and the concept of “cost performance” that users attach importance to should first be “easy to use” rather than “cheap”.

A “calligraphy robot” that can write the character of “good luck” captured the attention of the CCTV Spring evening of the Year of the Ox, demonstrating the dexterity of collaborative robots. In fact, this is only a “small test” for the collaborative robot, its ability is far from that.

Collaborative robots are already playing a huge role in industry. In simple terms, traditional industrial robots work safely and autonomously by isolating themselves from human contact, while collaborative robots perform tasks independently or sequentially in shared Spaces or in close proximity to humans. As an important branch of modern industrial robots, collaborative robots have attracted much attention since their introduction, and have developed rapidly in recent years.

According to the high-tech Robot Industry Research Institute (GGII), by 2023, the global sales of collaborative robots will reach 80,000 units, with a market size of nearly 12 billion yuan. This means that following the tide of collaborative robot financing that began in 2020, domestic collaborative robots have entered another outbreak cycle.

“Collaborative robots not only improve productivity, but also change the production relationship. They free people from heavy, dangerous and repetitive labor, so that people’s intelligence and ability can be reflected in more high-value-added work.” “In the sense that cobots really work side by side with humans, they are like human robot colleagues,” Cao Yuan, chairman and CEO of ELITE Robotics, told Science and Technology Daily.

Not so much “saving effort” as “empowering people”

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“Collaborative robots are also called man-machine collaborative robots, and its biggest feature is that it can be flexibly deployed, safe and reliable to use, simple and easy to use, and the user experience is significantly improved than that of traditional industrial robots.” Cao Yu Nan said.

It is understood that in order to ensure the safety of staff, the action of traditional industrial robots is often restricted in a security fence. Only after stopping or limiting the robot’s high-precision and high-speed operation (such as welding, handling palletizing, polishing, etc.), the staff can enter the security fence.

The collaborative robot can interact with humans in a shared space in a close distance, it does not need to set up security fences, can work directly with the staff on a production line, can protect the safety of employees at the same time to remove the barriers to human-machine collaboration.

“Rather than saying that cobots are ‘labor saving’ for humans, it is more appropriate to understand it as’ human empowerment. ‘” Cao Yu Nan said that taking traditional welding robots as an example, the staff responsible for the operation need to master welding knowledge and a certain programming ability, and the collaborative robot with simplified programming function greatly reduces the programming threshold, so that only welding experience workers can easily complete the programming operation according to the interface Settings, and it is simpler to use.

In addition to being safe, flexible and easy to use, efficiency is also a highlight of collaborative robots. Traditional industrial robots have high cost and high deployment cost, which makes some small and medium-sized enterprises prohibitive. “Cobots have shorter integration cycles, less downtime losses, hidden costs including maintenance and rewiring costs are eliminated, and the return on investment cycle is usually less than 12 months.” In other words, using a collaborative robot for one year can help users save one worker’s salary.” Cao Yu Nan said.