Should I Be Using Robots in My Production?

Nevertheless, small and medium-sized industrial companies still find it difficult to effectively integrate collaborative robots, also known as cobots, into their production processes. Existing collaborative assembly stations are fairly rigid and the interaction between humans and robots is limited to a predefined area and a small number of tasks. Common reasons for this are a lack of expertise or experience in planning and implementing HRC applications, fear of a risky investment, but also possible challenges in terms of worker safety as well as the robustness and reliability of the robots. Flexible HRC applications that would be required for dynamic production environments are not yet common in industry.

Flexible collaboration

Flexibility in human-robot collaboration usually refers to how quickly cobots can be reprogrammed or used for new processes. This ignores an aspect that is crucial to the design of manufacturing systems: the number of tasks a cobot can complete in a given time. Flexible collaboration means that the interaction between humans and robots while executing manufacturing tasks can take place in different forms and under different time constraints. It requires the cobot to keep a constant eye on the human and react to changes or disturbances in its environment in real time. To achieve this, cobots are equipped with external sensors and special control functions such as image processing and force control. AI algorithms can also help to enhance these capabilities. The use of these advanced autonomous robot technologies is an important factor for successfully implementing flexible HRC applications.

Systematically analyzing automation potentials

Researchers at Fraunhofer IPK are now providing support in analyzing the individual automation potential of a company by means of an automation assessment. »Many companies already have initial ideas for HRC scenarios or individual processes they would like to automate. But they often don’t know where to start«, says robotics expert Arturo Bastidas-Cruz.

A first step in the automation assessment is therefore to work with the company in consultation meetings and workshops to identify those manufacturing processes that have a high potential for automation. To this end, the Fraunhofer researcher and his team have defined a series of characteristics to assess the current situation in customers’ production environments. »We are consolidating our expert knowledge of state of the art robotics into certain criteria in order to systematically evaluate the potential for human-robot collaboration«, explains Bastidas-Cruz. »Based on these criteria, we can then make a reliable assessment.«

This process is supported by software that enables a quick and easy evaluation of production processes using the defined catalog of criteria. The software calculates an index for each process, which represents the automation potential on a scale. The higher the score for each process, the greater its automation potential. Which specific HRC scenario is actually feasible is then verified in a performance analysis that considers the design of the workspace and the tasks of the collaborative scenario. Finally, the scenario is evaluated based on relevant performance criteria such as safety, economic viability, flexibility, productivity, ergonomics and quality. The researchers work with the customer to determine which tasks are to be shared between robot and worker and in what form – always with the goal of exploiting the full automation potential of each production process.