Intelligent and Collaborative Robots

Abstract

It has been a belief for a long time since the birth of the industrial robot that the only thing it can do is playback simple motions that are taught in advance. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the industrial robot was reinvented as the industrial intelligent robot, able to perform highly complicated tasks like skilled production workers, mainly due to the rapid advancement in vision and force sensors. In addition, collaborative robots were developed to meet the demand of collaboration between human operators and industrial robots. The industrial intelligent robot and collaborative robot have recently been a key technology to solve issues that today’s manufacturing industry is faced with, including a decreasing number of skilled workers and demands for reduced manufacturing costs and delivery time. In this chapter, the latest trends in key technologies such as vision sensors, force sensors, and safety measures for collaborative robots are introduced with some robot cell application examples that have succeeded in drastically reducing machining costs.