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“ DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION GOES BEYOND IMPLEMENTING THE LATEST CLOUD SYSTEM OR EVEN REPLACING STAIRS WITH SLIDES ”
windshields into cars — big , heavy tasks ,” he says . “ Whereas fixed cobots are doing more human scale activities . They ’ re easy to use , and safe to deploy around humans . They ’ re easy to program , easy to deploy , and they typically don ’ t use a safety cage . Deployment times are measured in weeks , not months .”
Cobots are applicable in many different environments and situations . “ You ’ re limited only by your imagination ,”
Vahey says . “ I ’ ve seen so many different applications , but the sweet spot tends to be manufacturing operations and warehouse and logistics applications . So , for fixed cobots like Universal Robots , we tend to see a lot of machine tending , a lot of gluing and screwing . We ’ re seeing a lot more welding these days - that ’ s an emerging area . Packaging and unpackaging - the equivalent of palletising and depalletising , but on a smaller scale .”
MARCH 2020