Blog

Automating Manufacturing

“We need to make Cobots a household name”. – Tony Thompson, Founder of CobotsOnline 

Cobots Online is delighted to have won the Manufacturing Award at the Venturefest North East Innovation Awards 2022 for our machine tending cobot unit, CoboTend.

It was great to speak to other local businesses, build connections and showcase a range of our products. We enjoyed seeing so many of the North East’s top manufacturing companies gathered together. 

Over the past 18 months, we’ve worked tirelessly to develop our CoboTend unit for automatic machine tending. The automatic machine tending unit is now ready and waiting for distribution, and we are so proud of our team. 

Exhibition and Networking

We discussed how cobots don’t need to rest and don’t get sick so that they can conduct lights out manufacturing. Capable of extensive run times, the CoboTend unit is also precise and consistent. So, whilst cobots conduct repetitive tasks, workers are free to pursue more exciting technical roles instead.

“The race is on for digital enablement and automation: 52% of executives say that the autonomous supply chain (e.g., robots in warehouses and stores, driverless forklifts and trucks, delivery drones and fully automated planning) is either here or will be by 2025.” – EY  

At CobotsOnline, we use cobot CNC machine tending in our own manufacturing business. Therefore, we consider ourselves experts in utilising the functionality and flexibility of lights out manufacturing. 

Having learned from experience, we created our CoboTend unit to be moved easily and quickly from one machine to another. Importantly, we installed integral safety scanners, which slow the robot arm to a safe speed when a human enters the work zone.

The Future is Cobots

Venturefest was the perfect opportunity to present our work on CNC machine tending. We impressed upon the industry the importance of cobots for the future of automated manufacturing. Although China and Taiwan are currently leading the way, the UK is ready to realise the true potential of cobots.

Automated manufacturing takes repetitive machine tending tasks out of human hands and puts them into the arms of cobots. Consequently, removing health risks, increasing productivity, and modernising manufacturing all in one easy movement.  Any organisation manufacturing products can use cobots to streamline repetitive tasks.  

“Human-robot collaboration is gaining more interest in industrial settings, as collaborative robots are considered safe, and robot actions can be programmed easily by, for example, physical interaction.” –  The Field Robotics section, Frontiers.  

We look forward to educating the public and promoting this incredible technology in our industry. If you would like to learn more about automated machine tending and what cobots can do for your business or are interested in a demo, please get in touch.