Artificial intelligence (AI) and flexible robotic systems have become key technologies for the future of industrial automation and are having an impact in many ways.
High-precision adaptive processing, safe robotic handling of high-energy materials, and artificial intelligence (AI) assisted robot programming. Once you put robotics into practice, you can increase the productivity of each employee and improve working conditions.
As the manufacturing industry itself changes radically, AI and flexible robotic systems have become key technologies.
Manufacturing is transitioning from traditional low-mix/high-volume units to more customization through high-mix/low-volume manufacturing processes. This requires robotic systems, which can adapt quickly and intelligently as the product varies. From a technical point of view, we are not there yet, but one day we will be.
We want to bring a range of tasks to the table, from positioning and path planning to intelligent grasping and handheld inspection, as opposed to traditional inspection devices where parts move on a conveyor belt and cameras only take snapshots of the parts as they pass by.
We can expect more systems to incorporate creative problem-solving capabilities. Tasks like sorting through boxes are challenging for robots because they struggle to accurately grab parts from boxes. But humans can do this very easily. This is where technology is going. AI will really take over motion planning, grab planning, and come up with learning policies that automatically guide the robot to respond to different conditions.
With the development of intelligence, the cost of industrial robots will also fall at the same time. This opens the door to a variety of applications for manufacturing companies that previously could not consider using robots, either because they were too expensive or because they could not justify the investment. But when costs do come down, it completely changes the game.
The next few years will see rapid growth in this area. Inspired by the growing popularity of collaborative robots over the past decade, imagine a future manufacturing landscape where humans and robots can work together safely and efficiently using adaptive, flexible robotic systems that can easily respond to changes in product lines. Technologies such as artificial intelligence will change the way we look at manufacturing and how we define and achieve different levels of productivity, and will also experience new approaches and strategies when it comes to workforce.
There's no getting around it, it's not a new phenomenon. We've seen over the past few centuries that it will be interesting to see how the workforce changes and ADAPTS to the new reality as new technologies emerge and old ones retire.
