CLOUD
48
C ollaborative robots - ‘ cobots ’ – are nothing new . Invented in 1996 by J Edward Colgate and Michael Peshkin , two professors at Northwestern University , cobots are robots designed to function alongside a human in a shared workspace , and are usually built with strict safety measures to ensure the safety of their human coworkers .
While cobot technology has been around for over twenty years , recent improvements in the software that supports automated workers , coupled with what Harvey Lewis , an Associate Partner at EY , calls the “ transition from occupations to task-based work ,” wherein division of labour and increasingly specialised job roles create more and more specialised requirements , may be pushing the technology towards a mass adoption tipping point .
Today , cobots are the fastest growing segment of industrial automation , and a report on a BMW assembly plant published in the MIT technology review found that , when
JANUARY 2020