Yaskawa Robotics - Top 10 Trends in the Industrial Robot Automation Industry

1. The demand for smart sensors is increasing

Quality inspection is a key component in all industries. Analyzing everything from food to phone covers ensures that consumers can trust the goods they receive. Smart sensors enable manufacturers to handle this critical step in production more efficiently.

Smart sensors are often a merger between different types of robots. Many quality assurance programs consist of collaborative robotic arms equipped with vision sensors. AI monitors data from sensors to quickly assess whether the final product is manufactured correctly. The level of accuracy that smart sensors can provide is expected to be further applied to most automated factory floors.

2. Drug synthesis and transportation

Pharmaceutical companies are tasked with developing drugs. Drug synthesis requires not only a high degree of precision, but also many safety precautions. Some manufacturers are picking out special robots that can be used to help with chemical compounds used in drug production. The use of robots to dispense hazardous substances is not necessarily a new concept. However, the increased affordability, flexibility, and safety of cobots are attracting more pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Robots are also being used for drug dispensing and sample handling. Medical labs with heavy workloads are adopting industrial robotic automation technology to improve efficiency. In addition, this reduces the risk of human contact with body fluids, greatly reducing the probability of sample contamination.

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3. Release and standardization of automation structures

As it stands, the vast majority of robotics companies will keep their design plans and specifications. Going forward, we would like to see the launch of automated structures start to be standardized. Just like open-source coding, this will allow engineers to rely on group research to adapt and refine their work.

This also opens the way for future compatibility. As more and more industries demand effective robotic solutions, designing a cohesive robotic workforce will become a necessity for the future. Robotics companies may collaborate and work together to develop a set of standard specifications. In this way, consumers can confidently equip their factories with different types of robots from different manufacturers.

4. The popularity of cooperative robots in the service industry

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of small businesses in the service industry that rely on automated robots. For example, a beverage mixing robot can help in a coffee and smoothie shop. Grocery stores may use roaming bots that can answer customers' questions in-store.

This kind of industrial robotic automation is an excellent way for businesses to solve staffing problems. It also allows human workers to perform more personalized tasks, such as talking to customers at the beverage counter. Cost has long been an obstacle for small businesses looking to adopt robots. We've seen more affordable robots in the robotics market and hope this trend will continue.

5. Higher demand for data analysis services

Most automated factory floors are accumulating data. From smart sensors to collaborative robotic arms, data is generated for every robot implemented. This information is invaluable for manufacturers looking to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and increase profit margins. There's a lot of data waiting to be mined and evaluated.

Which link introduces the most errors? What steps involve downtime? Can a process be handled more efficiently with a robot than with a human hand? These questions can be answered by the collected data, but first they require an in-depth analysis of the data. To make it easier for manufacturers to optimize their processes, the demand for data analytics technologies and services is bound to increase.

6. Rely on robots to ensure consumer safety

We've already mentioned the benefit of ensuring worker safety through automation. However, these benefits can extend beyond the factory to ensure consumer safety. This trend is already happening in the transport industry, especially in the aviation industry. For example, the Air Cobot is used to help inspect the safety of aircraft before they fly. Working in tandem with human inspectors, the robot relies on an array of vision sensors, bumpers, scanners and GPS to scrutinize the underside of the aircraft before takeoff. The level of accuracy that cobots can provide speeds up processing without sacrificing safety.

7. Shift to virtual engineering solutions

As you might expect, the development of industry is labor-intensive. The work is not only in planning and design, but also in construction and testing. More and more companies are moving their engineering approach to engineering to improve cost-effectiveness and collaboration.

We can see an increasing reliance on virtual engineering techniques, such as 3D mapping, which allows developers to work together and perform rough testing of their designs. This relieves the physical construction and testing stress of the robot, which reduces the amount of money and time spent on engineering prototypes.

8. In some factories, there are more robots than human workers

There are many jobs that, while essential, are challenging for human workers. People need to take frequent breaks, and doing repetitive tasks can make them more likely to get injured. Reducing the pressure on workers is one of the attractive solutions offered by industrial robot automation.

We can help robots find and place jobs and see the game-changing benefits of factory robotics. Since these laborious tasks can be handled entirely by trained robots, human workers begin to take supervisory positions. These supervisors can monitor multiple robots at once while noticing plant alarms. Factories will shift from a majority of humans to a majority of robots. This trend is bound to continue.

9. Artificial intelligence on the management of network security

There are countless benefits to using robots to automate the manufacturing process. However, it's important to remember that every solution comes with cybersecurity risks. From cobot programming to the data collected by sensors, there's a lot of information that needs to be protected.

As a result, AI is in the early stages of its application to cybersecurity management, and they can help protect a company's investment. AI supervision means that there are always "humans" watching and performing routine checks to identify security weaknesses. It's also interesting to see bots managing other bots.

10. Improvement of agricultural efficiency

The agricultural industry is vital to our survival, but the number of people who want to enter the industry is small, leaving those responsible for bulk crops with a lack of labor and time. That's why farmers choose to add robots with smart sensors to their regular team of workers.

For example, there are robots that can patrol the field, identify weeds, and treat them with the appropriate chemicals, and they have great potential to improve planting and harvesting efficiency while maintaining crop quality. This is likely to be a major sign of technological progress that can be seen in the near future.

Yaskawa Robotics - Top 10 Trends in the Industrial Robot Automation Industry

Yaskawa Robotics - Top 10 Trends in the Industrial Robot Automation Industry

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