Engineering news
Italian robot maker Comau has developed a collaborative robot, or cobot, which can handle weights of up to 110kg safely alongside humans in manufacturing and factory environments.
Comau claims the Advanced Use Robotic Arm (Aura) cobot can cooperate safely with humans in “any process or sector” because of its use of control, perception and predictive system technologies.
The cobot is equipped with sensors installed under a layer of protective foam to ensure safety. It manages sensitivity by combining the simultaneous perception of the proximity of a person – or of any other component – as well as contacts and their intensity.
“A robot that wants to be collaborative must be able to interact with man regardless of the payload,” said Comau. “We have designed Aura to allow all the productive sectors to use a collaborative robot, avoiding the need to be confined to small-size and low-payload robots.
“The combined use of these sensor and control technologies, employing laser scanners to identify the positions of persons dynamically, makes it possible to ramp down the motion of the robot to a stop only when it is very close to, or actually in contact with, the worker.”
When Aura is touched, the cobot stops moving and can react according to operator needs. The solution also includes sight with a vision system, integrated into the robot controls, which transmits data on the proximity of people to the robot’s area of action, enabling software to predict their movements and modify the robot’s trajectory accordingly.
The company added: “The payload is an indirect problem. The real problem, for previous technologies, was to avoid vibrations that could make the robot stop if it isn’t touched or too near a person. Vibration is frequent during production, and a robot with a high payload vibrates more than one with a lighter one, so it needs a stable base in which sensors are accommodated.”