Our Cobot Co-Workers

By Lynn DeRocco
February 18, 2022
Zebra Technologies Corporation
Feature

Summary

These autonomous helpers could be the compassionate technology that enables factories and distribution centers to unstick supply chains.

Cobots, shorthand for collaborative robots, are coming to a factory near you, if they’re not there already. These autonomous helpers are designed to work alongside humans to increase production, and to do so safely. But amid concerns that they’ll eliminate human jobs, cobots are now being promoted as a sort of compassionate technology. For instance, on a recent Cheddar Innovates broadcast, Tom Bianculli, chief technology officer for Zebra Technologies, said that cobots can reduce the miles walked by a warehouse worker from 12 or so miles a day to about 3 miles. He stated that it’s about “having empathy for that worker, increasing their job satisfaction, and improving efficiency of the operation all around—a win-win.” What effect this will have on workers’ relationships with their fitness trackers is another matter.

So, it seems that the future of humans collaborating with robots is meant to be one that workers feel good about, not threatened by. In factories, warehouses, and distribution centers, they are being used to literally lift the load that employees have needed to carry. “A robot can do what it does best, which is transport, the movement of goods, and the human worker can do what it does best, which is the articulation, the actual picking of goods,” said Bianculli. The goal is “deploying those technologies together, where the robot can autonomously navigate an environment and [a worker is] able to take a picked order, put it in a bin, and then bring that over to where it needs to be shipped.”

Of course, like human workers, cobots come in a wide range, and they will continue to be able to do more complex tasks with new innovations, especially in conjunction with other available platforms and technologies. A perfect example is what we are seeing in the medical field—cobots specialized for medical instrument manufacturing but leaving the patients to medical professionals, with their education, expertise and ability to make critical, informed decisions.

Though the folks at Indeed.com might someday argue the point, even “hiring” cobots requires humans to make decisions about which type is right for the environment and the tasks that need to be performed. The decision should take safety into account first, then consider the level of dexterity needed and space available.

Bianculli’s position corroborates this: “There’s a statistic out there that says 50% of work can be automated, but less than 10% of jobs can be automated more than 90%." He adds that while tasks within a workflow can be automated, automating a complete workflow end-to-end is not likely.

When asked by Cheddar about the outlook for cobots in the tech and logistics market, Bianculli cited these three dynamics as contributing to their adoption:

Shortage of labor
Creation of new types of cobots
“Need for speed”

These points all speak to the customer experience as much as the worker experience. Looking at the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the supply chain as a painfully relevant example, customers are clearly feeling the upset of the labor shortage as they wait for deliveries of items they ordered that may not even be made yet.

Bianculli said, “94% of retailers will invest to help drive automation to meet the expectation of customers” at the “velocity at which consumers expect things to be delivered." That bodes well for the greater adoption of cobots in factories and distribution centers and provides hope for easing supply chain constraints.

Like human workers, “upskilling” is possible for these types of co-workers, too. As new cobots are designed to perform additional functions, factories and plants will have few reasons not to invest in them, and employees will likely come to appreciate the helping hands, even if they’re robotic.

Zebra acquired Fetch Robotics last year anticipating the continued interest by companies in collaborative robots as part of an automation solution.

About The Author

Lynn DeRocco is a Content Editor with Automation.com.

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