Using grippers, cameras, and sensors, they can locate, pick, and place parts, then count and inspect them. The competitive price makes these robots appealing to SME and first-time robot users. The average price per unit is much cheaper and is expected to decline further. These enable SMEs to consider the usage of robots which until now was unaffordable. The human-robot collaboration has social implications, especially in the workspace. The Collaborative robots will improve the quality of the workplace in doing the ‘dull & dirty’ work and allowing the worker job satisfaction in managing these robots and to dedicate themselves to more interesting and creative tasks. These robots are usually trained by an operator holding the arm and to follow the desired path of movement and executing the desired tool commands. A tablet may allow operators to fine tune the operation settings. Collaborative robots have an impact on the entire value chain of manufacturing industry. These robots are used to expand and improve product quality and increase production. Introducing robots may lead to subsequent growth through automation and creates greater employment. This allows SME to speed up non-skilled manual tasks and can operate non- stop 24/7 to be flexible workforce multipliers. In addition, the approach optimises the production process with greater precision and speed. The quality of production is enhanced, while station times and redundancies are reduced. The collaboration strengthens the overall competitiveness of the whole manufacturing industry. Their ease of deployment, flexibility and affordability give then an accurate fit for SMEs. Ideally it should also be light-weight, modular lean, simple and adaptive so they can bring their benefits to SME. Cobot ease of use and flexibility can support the trend for massive personalisation together with additive manufacturing for local production in small and medium facilities. Currently, it looks like companies that have used cobots for automation have gained a competitive advantage that helps increase sales and reallocate, workers to new tasks. Demand for the cobot has exploded. One reason is the rising labour costs worldwide concentrated in industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and construction. Firms are turning to cobots which are cheaper than traditional labour and even inexpensive compared to dumb robots. Firms are under
pressure to make their workforces even more productive. With cobots, the means to do so have never been more affordable. Cobot makers are responding, delivering industry-specific cobots with lower selling unit prices. SME are buying into the cobot’s wave. The adoption of collaborative robots increases Manufacturing Operations Management or MOM. The systems need to be adapted and the changes will bring more simplicity and there will be new challenges. The maintenance of cobots is usually minimal, so extended maintenance procedures are less relevant. Training by user-friendly touch interface means that there is no need to develop and maintain extensive sets of robotic programs. On the other hand, many capabilities of systems such as traceability, quality, planning optimisation, safety management or warehouse management remain highly relevant in an increasingly competitive and regulated environment. Cobots are flexible and can be moved quickly from one process to another. MOM systems need to be flexible to quickly adapt to these changes and it should be able to manage a distributed production environment extending it to the supply chain without adding extra complexity. Where are we now? Teaching robots to manipulate objects is a challenging task. Dexterity still presents a major challenge. Research and development have demonstrated one-shot learning, where the cobots can recognise new objects without a vast training data. In the future robots may learn a task by watching a human doing it once, or it could possibly be programmed using a VR gesture. Today the systems are precise enough for robots to work alongside humans. Cobot arms and automated guided vehicles have become standard in manufacturing and warehouse environments. It is the case of tough for computers and easy for people or hard for people to describe to computers. As cobot vision advances, so too will adoption. Increased safety and ability create greater demand, which will likely to develop design for more advanced computer vision, creating a positive feedback loop. Hardware improvements are making cobots more effective. Cheaper and better cobot hardware is a focus on computer vision and tailoring software for specialised tasks.
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Malaysian Technology Strategic Outlook 2019/2020 Intergration of High Technology
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