Advanced Robotics

Advanced robotics systems are ready to transform industrial operations. Compared with conventional robots, advanced robots have a superior perception, integrability, adaptability, and mobility. These improvements permit faster setup, commissioning, and reconfiguration, as well as more efficient and stable operations. The cost of this sophisticated equipment will decline as prices for sensors and computing power decrease, and as software increasingly replaces hardware as the primary driver of functionality. Taken together, these improvements mean that advanced robots will be able to perform many tasks more economically than the previous generation of automated systems.

Most producers recognize that advanced robotic systems will play an important role in the factory of the future, and they are optimistic about the potential to increase the use of these systems. They maintain this positive outlook despite dissatisfaction with their current progress toward implementation and the performance of these systems to date. Impediments to the broader application of advanced robots include the limitations of the current technology and the high costs of acquiring and operating it. In addition, many producers lack the key enablers of deployment: a target picture of the future factory, organizational competencies, and appropriate system architecture.

Advanced robotics can yield various benefits:

• Productivity. Automation of manual tasks drives higher productivity as advanced robots take over such previously manual tasks as an assembly of flexible parts. The ability of advanced robots to self-adjust to changing process parameters improves resilience by eliminating “micro stops” that often occur in con­ventional robotics processes. In addition, advanced robots are significantly easier than conventional robots to set up and reconfigure, if suitable simulation software is available, and they are quicker at learning how to perform tasks. The rapid ramp-up of processes is especially valuable for production systems that require frequent adjustments, such as in response to product changeovers or customization requests.
• Quality. Advanced robots can outperform human workers on some tasks, such as assembly, delivering greater reliability and precision, and thus improving quality.
• Safety. Compared with conventional robots, advanced robots can perform more tasks that are dangerous or physically demanding for human workers—such as tasks performed in hazardous environments or operations that could lead to repetitive-stress injuries. The use of machine-vision technologies that improve robots’ perception can enhance safety, even in fenceless environments.
• Agility. Producers can use advanced robotics in configuring new production systems that meet the rising demand for more product variations, customized products, and product redesigns.

• Production. Advanced robots are already present in production environments, and their importance will grow over the next few years. Discrete production, rather than continuous production, is likely to see the most valuable applications of advanced robotics. For example, a particular producer of sealing solutions uses more than 40 robots to load and unload machines in its manufacturing cells.

  Producers, especially in the automotive industry, also use advanced robots to autonomously process workpieces or to perform assembly processes. For instance, an automotive OEM uses robots to mount protective foils under high pressure on the inside of car doors. Since advanced robots can self-adjust on the basis of environmental perception, they can perform complex assembly processes, such as those involv­ing flexible parts. Direct, real-time communication between workpieces and robots—for example, by using radio-frequency identification technology—also supports assembly. For example, robots can quickly change tools as needed, without requiring explicit prior instruction. To facilitate introducing robots into processes, companies rely on simplified interfaces between robots and other equipment and on the ability to use existing information, such as digital product-data models, to deduce relevant process parameters. 

• Logistics. With focus on in-plant logistics and warehousing. Autonomous mobile robots are gaining importance in in-plant logistics and will eventually replace both fixed conveyor belts and conventional AGVs that rely on magnetic strips for guidance. Survey participants expect that autonomous logistics robots will be more important than conventional AGVs by 2025. Several types of autonomous mobile robots can undertake both transportation and loading tasks. For instance, robotics producers are testing early applications of mobile robots that autonomously supply workstations. In addition to using robots for ground transport, companies may find that air transport via drones is feasible. Approximately 50% of survey respondents say that air transport could be relevant to their operations by 2025.

  Autonomous robots can perform picking, packaging, and palletizing operations. ­Using robots for kitting tasks is another promising application, but some challenges in this area remain to be overcome. Sensors and machine learning are essential so that robots can identify, pick, and handle unsorted or flexible parts in bins. The first industrial applications of this type have recently become available.

  Quality. Advanced robots can control inline quality by automatically adjusting equipment parameters in response to perceived quality. Small robots can recognize damage and perform automated inspections of large parts, and mobile robots can autonomously move testing equipment to the places where it is currently needed.

  Maintenance. Mobile robots can support maintenance by transporting spare parts and performing mobile inspections. For example, a robotics producer has developed advanced robots that perform a remote visual inspection of tanks, vessels, and pipes. Such applications are most relevant to process industries, where inspections are often difficult to perform.

All industrial producers recognize the importance of advanced robotics and plan to further implement this technology in their factories. But the vital connection to an overall vision of the factory of the future is absent in many cases. To fully capture the benefits of advanced robotics, producers must quickly develop a target picture for the factory of the future and identify the most promising applications of advanced robotics within the context of holistic optimization. They must also ensure that their organization and system architecture are ready to tackle the challenges of implementation. The time for taking a wait-and-see approach has passed. To win in the 2020s, all producers must implement advanced robotics as part of a comprehensive digital transformation of their operations.