Out of the cage: Rethinking robotics

Industrial robots have long been hostile, caged creatures. Around humans, their terrific power needs to be curbed; their speed needs to be restrained; and if anyone ventures into their workspace they are shut  off altogether.

But in recent years, the barriers between robots and humans have been coming down. A friendlier breed of robots has begun appearing on the factory floor — and with it, the emergence of a new way of working that can cut costs and increase efficiency in labour-intensive industries.

One area that has benefited hugely is the automotive sector. “In an automotive plant,  a vehicle is produced every minute, and approximately 1,000 cars are manufactured a day,” said Adolfo Suarez Roos, Airbus Group expert and robotics co-ordinator of French National Research Agency project ICARO. Turnover is high, and collaborative robots  are able to help workers with repetitive tasks.

Suarez is hopeful the same success can be replicated in the aviation sector. But given that robotics isn’t as widely used, the challenges  are very different. “[In automotive], a robot  has 40 seconds to do its job and the complete programming task takes about a month,” he said. “At Airbus, we produce 1.5 aircraft per  day, so we have to look at tasks that will last several hours. We need mobile, collaborative robots and a very simple, efficient way to programme the robot.”