Cobot

A cobot^[1] or co-robot^[2] (from collaborative robot) is a robot intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace.^[3] This is in contrast with other robots, designed to operate autonomously or with limited guidance,^[4] which is what most industrial robots were up until the decade of the 2010s.

Cobots were invented in 1996 by J. Edward Colgate and Michael Peshkin,^[5] professors at Northwestern University. A 1997 US patent filing^[6] describes cobots as "an apparatus and method for direct physical interaction between a person and a general purpose manipulator controlled by a computer."

Cobots resulted from a 1994 General Motors initiative led by Prasad Akella of the GM Robotics Center and a 1995 General Motors Foundation research grant intended to find a way to make robots or robot-like equipment safe enough to team with people.^[7] The first cobots assured human safety by having no internal source of motive power. Instead, motive power was provided by the human worker.^[8] The cobot's function was to allow computer control of motion, by redirecting or steering a payload, in a cooperative way with the human worker. Later cobots provided limited amounts of motive power as well.^[9]

The General Motors team used the term Intelligent Assist Device (IAD) as an alternative to cobot, especially in the context of industrial material handling and automotive assembly operations.^[10] A draft safety standard for Intelligent Assist Devices was published in 2002.^[11] An updated safety standard was published in 2016.^[12]

Cobotics^[13] released several cobot models in 2002.^{[14] [15]}

Universal Robots released its first cobot, the UR5, in 2008.^[16] In 2012 the UR10 cobot^[17] was released, and later a table top cobot, UR3, in 2015. KUKA's LBR iiwa ^[18] was the result of a long collaboration with the German Aerospace Center institute.^[19] Rethink Robotics released an industrial cobot, Baxter, in 2012.^[20]

FANUC - the world's largest producer of industrial robots^[21] - released its first collaborative robot in 2015 - the FANUC CR-35iA with a heavy 35kg payload.^[22] Since that time FANUC has released a smaller line of collaborative robots including the FANUC CR-4iA, CR-7iA and the CR-7/L long arm version.

Cobots can have many roles — from autonomous robots capable of working together with humans in an office environment that can ask you for help,^[23] to industrial robots having their protective guards removed as they can react to a human presence under EN ISO 10218 or RSA BSR/T15.1.^[24]

References

See also

• Air-Cobot, a collaborative mobile robot to inspect aircraft