What is a Collaborative Robot (Cobot)?

Collaborative robots are being designed as inherently safe to work around people. This involves new ideas for robotic arms including reducing their strength and speed, new types of joints, softer materials, and using advanced sensors to shut down the cobot safely if it accidentally collides with someone.

There are four types of collaborative robot features according to ISO 10218-1 and 10218-2.

Each of these features, individually, qualifies a robot as collaborative.

Interested in lowering costs and increasing productivity ?

Your Neff Power Sales Engineers can assist you in selecting the right cobot or industrial robot that meets your production needs. Click the link below if you are interested in scheduling an on-site Yaskawa Motoman Collaborative Robot demo.

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What are the four types of collaborative robot features?

  1. Speed & Separation Monitoring - Cobot slows down when a human approaches
  2. Stop-State Monitoring - Cobot stops when human enters the safety-monitored zone
  3. Power & Force Limiting - Cobot stops upon human contact
  4. Hand Guiding - Cobot can be guided by human contact

What are Power and Force Limiting Features?

  • Sensors in each joint — any value detected by the sensor will be compared to standard state and evaluated in order to perform an action (i.e. stop, move away from the force, etc.)
  • Hand guiding — easy and intuitive robot path programming by dragging the arm around its working envelope and registering positions and end effector actions
  • Round shaped design — created to smooth the surface, remove sharp edges from impact dissipation, integrated motors and wiring, pinch point free design to prevent hand squeeze, lightweight
  • Additional safety options — soft active or passive skin (jacket) for softened impact

A cobot in PFL mode will have slower speeds than an industrial robot

Let's take a look at an industrial collaborative robot's axes

An industrial robot, whether collaborative or traditional, has various axes configurations. Six-axis robots allow for greater flexibility and can perform a wider variety of applications than robots with fewer axes. The diagram below indicates each of the HC10 robot's six axes.