Universal Robots, a Danish robot manufacturer that pioneered ‘co-bots’ — collaborative robots — on Wednesday discussed the future of the technology in India and how accessibility to it could bring about a revolution in various industries.
Co-bots are designed to work with humans and assist with a variety of tasks; this helps automate and streamline repetitive and potentially unsafe processes, ensuring a safe work environment while increasing productivity and efficiency.
With small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) set to grow, the company said that the benefits of using their technology could be significant. It pointed to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at a BMW factory, which showed that teams made of humans and robots collaborating efficiently can be around 85% more productive than teams of either only humans or only robots. The study also found that the cooperative process reduced human idle time by virtue of its pace-setting ability.
The Universal Robots India product range has three co-bots: UR3, UR5 and UR10 (the numerals indicate the payload each can handle, in kilos) priced from Rs. 8 lakh to Rs. 20 lakh. It has close to a hundred units with clients including Mahindra, TVS, TATA Consultancy Services, Siemens, Bajaj, BOSCH, Renault, Hindustan Unilever Limited, GE, and Calvin Klein.
Speaking at the event, Pradeep David, General Manager, Universal Robots, said that the latest collaborative robot technology should be available to all businesses. “The nominal investment cost is quickly recovered as our robotic arms have an average payback period of just six months.”
He said anybody who wants to increase productivity while maintaining high safety standards needs advanced robotics. Mr. David explained that the demand for the technology is growing; a report by the International Federation of Robotics said that Indian companies had imported 2,600 robots in 2015, projected to grow to 6000 by 2018.
“For every robot that Indian companies use China puts into use about 30 more, so it is important to be more competitive in this field.”
Mr. David cited the successful use of co-bots in manufacturing operations for companies like Bajaj.
“You still need the human input to attend to the finer details but the brute work, like tightening screws for instance, can be done better by a robot working side by side with him or her in the production line.”
The Universal Robots India product range has 3 co-bots priced from Rs. 8 lakh
to Rs. 20 lakh
