Robot, Cobot, and Smart Cobot met

Classic Robot – When it comes to talking about automation, and certainly about industrial robotics, wherever it goes in the intuition way, there are so many brands, so many capabilities, colors, speeds, carrying loads … so Let’s make it simpler. Until a few years ago, all industrial arms were called “robots”, they always came with consultants, planners, programmers, mechanics, and check-checkers within 3- 12 months of the client’s decision, had a robot according to specifications, and always next to the robot There was another automated array of dedicated conveyors, sensors, pistons and sometimes cameras and other equipment that required a lot of engineering work of integration. At the end of the robot did exactly what they wanted according to the specifications, but if there was a mistake in the specifications, then either they managed to fix, or someone would have stayed with a “white elephant” (and we meet herds of such elephants throughout the industry in Israel). After the implementation, any change required would usually result in a high cost of activating the robot’s entourage, and changing the working environment accordingly, and of course implementing the change would take time. Another huge challenge was the safety issue – industrial robots are very dangerous animals and so will not kill humans. The person around them lives in cages. If the cage door is opened, the robot must stop. This has resulted in many tasks being inaccessible or uneconomical to the application of robots, especially tasks with a high variety of human handles that easily deal with, but the robot is required to replace several grippers ( Palms) to complete the operation.

Cobot (according to and Founded in 1996, the first prototypes of robots that are safe enough to work with humans were built, a category that over the years was given the name “collaborative robot” – or, in short, cobot = collaborative robot , UR, or some researchers from different universities. In the mid-2000s, a number of initial models of the product began to emerge, none of which were able to grow significantly in business. The robots were (and still are) more expensive than classic robots, and significantly slower than classic robots because they had to move slowly enough In order not to hurt the people next to them, they work. Their application speed improved from a few quarters to a few months to implement, and still required their very expensive entourage, and the very expensive integration of different sensing systems from different vendors to realize a customer solution. The products continued to be niche products, both because of the relatively high cost, and also because the robot manufacturers and distributors were easier in most cases to convince the customer to compromise and “get along” with a robot. The situation in the market is somewhat similar to that in the automotive industry, traditional car manufacturers have for about three decades postponed the switch to electric vehicles, even though the technology was available for development long ago, and even today, most players who offer hail cars, still prefer to sell regular cars. > Smart Cobot – Professor Rodney Brooks has been running MIT University’s Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Lab for a decade, from where he went on to create and launch the iRobot robotic vacuum cleaner. When he saw the revolution the iPhone was making in the mobile world, he realized that the iPhone of the Cobots – the Smart Cobot, had to be invented. Perception said it should be not only safe, but also intuitive. Just as no one is afraid to install an app on their iPhone today, and no one orders and pays for a technician to change preferences on the phone app, Rodney realized that in a similar way, the Cobot had to be reinvented. As the iPhone has a lot of senses that each application uses some, and each time differently, so too should the smart robot build with loads of capabilities, and in each application to use out of all the capabilities they need.

In fact, from the 2013 revolution in the market, Smart Cobot applications are completed in a few weeks and in some cases even within days, the capabilities of the Cobot have become so intuitive with current hardware and software updates that it now takes a non-engineered employee and “on his own to install a smartphone app” to understand and learn with diverse tasks in the workspace. The speed and overall cost of the application has dropped dramatically, and capabilities have skyrocketed (who can compare a dial phone to the iPhone?), Application methodologies have also changed, and the larger and more expensive entourage that accompanied each robotic application is no longer needed. And as a result of this revolution, smart Cobots are the fastest growing segment in robotics today (up over 100% a year over the past three years).

It’s clear to us that iPhone costs more than Motorola’s StarTech or Alpha, but it’s clear to us that we accept much more. No customer comes to the store asking for an iPhone, for the back camera and WiFi component, no one even thinks about buying a StarTech and integrating it to get the iPhone performance, it just sounds ridiculous.