Smart Autonomous Cobots

Alstrut India Pvt. Ltd. is banking on its range of smart autonomous collaborative robots to alter the levels of automation in the auto components industry.

- Deepti Thore

Collaborative robots or cobots are designed to work in close proximity with the human workforce. Relatively unguarded, they are easy to integrate. The objective being to keep humans from working on repetitive and dangerous tasks. With the advent of cobots by 2008, the belief that humans can be better utilised by ensuring they devote time to higher valued, manual tasks, both upstream and downstream has only got stronger. According to MIT researchers, humans working in tandem with robots have found to be 85 per cent more productive than those working alone. Cobots also help eliminate the risk of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) as per the study. Opined K Srinath, Business Head - Robotics, Alstrut India Pvt. Ltd., “The cobots have brought a complete shift in the orientation of how automation is looked at.” “Using human intelligence, the level of automation actually required gets reduced. While in the past the popularity of smart sensors was found in plant operations, the collaborative robots on the other hand, with the help of human intelligence have been able to reduce the concerns pertaining to the handicap failing to work on an application in the absence of the sensor,” he explained. Srinath claimed that the combination of a human, performing the tasks of the sensor in collaboration with a robot, is the USP for the Chennai based company with its cobots deployed at multiple client sites in India and globally as a testimony. It has a serious potential to alter the levels of automation in the auto components industry.