New 'cobots' don't replace manufacturing workers, they help them

David Young has seen a parade of robots take over tasks he and his colleagues used to do by hand.

So Young, a machine operator, isn't fazed by the sleek new "cobot" — collaborative robot — perched at his workstation at Kay Manufacturing in Calumet City, Ill. The silver cobot, resembling a modern desk lamp, is being trained to do visual inspections of the automotive parts that Kay makes, its arm rotating so an attached camera can detect any defects.

It's a task Young said he won't miss doing himself, just as he doesn't miss the manual work that gave him arthritis in his hands and feet before other robots took over those duties. "It is hard to see every little thing," said Young, 58. "This will make my job easier."

Collaborative robots, one of the fastest-growing segments in robotics, are becoming an increasingly popular automation tool for manufacturers seeking to boost productivity.

Designed to augment the capabilities of human workers rather than replace them, cobots are billed as safe for people to interact with, easy to program and inexpensive to install — a potential game-changer for small- and midsize manufacturers that have lagged their larger competitors in the automation game.

Whether cobots maintain their promise as human helpers rather than substitutes remains to be seen. Their impact on employment may not be so benign once the technology evolves beyond repetitive tasks and they become better at thinking and learning, said Darrell West, founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution.

"I don't think they represent a major threat to humans," West said. "But the prices are coming down and these cobots are getting more sophisticated, so down the road they could."

"There are endless needs for companies to get workers doing high-value tasks," said Walter Vahey, president of the system test group at Massachusetts-based Teradyne, a leading supplier of industrial automation that owns two of the biggest cobot brands, Universal Robots and MiR.

Cobots, currently 3 percent of robot sales, are forecast to hit 34 percent by 2025, when global spending on robotics is estimated to reach $13 billion, according to the Robotic Industries Association.

Jürgen von Hollen, president of Denmark-based Universal Robots, calls the technology "the big equalizer" that will help smaller manufacturers grow amid challenges to hire and retain manual labor. It also will help them meet customers' increasing demand for flexibility as product life cycles get shorter, customization abounds and tariff policies shift, he said.

"We are in the embryonic stage of people understanding the potential," said von Hollen, whose company projects 50 percent annual sales growth over the next five years; it recently sold its 25,000th cobot to Kay and this week one of its cobots rang the closing bell on the New York Stock Exchange. "The challenge is to get that message across about what this can actually mean to a small company."

Even unions are excited about cobots, as "it is actually a cutting-edge thing to have humans and robots work in the same place," said Brad Markell, executive director of the Industrial Union Council for AFL-CIO.

Brian Pelke, president of Kay Manufacturing, said robots have allowed the 72-year-old company to grow, and he expects his new cobots to give him an additional competitive edge.

Kay, which introduced robots to its plant in 1996, has never laid anyone off as a result of automation, Pelke said. Though its workforce declined to 40 from 120 during the Great Recession, Kay Manufacturing now has 180 employees across two factories. "If we didn't have automation there would be no jobs," Pelke said.

Traditional industrial robots typically take six months to get up and running and work inside of $200,000 safety cages, Pelke said. Kay's first cobot, which cost about $47,000, was fully deployed within 30 days, he said. It takes employees 87 minutes to complete the basic tutorial on how to program it.

In addition to being easy to program and repurpose for different uses, cobots are distinct from traditional industrial robots because of safety features that allow them to work side-by-side with humans. They automatically stop when they bump into an obstacle, and can be programmed to run at reduced speed when their sensors detect a human is nearby. They are limited in speed and how much weight they can hold.

Despite excitement about cobot technology, many applications are still limited and the platform is young, said Stephen Laaper, a principal at Deloitte Consulting who advises companies on incorporating automation

As capabilities continue to advance, cobots will have a critical impact on the workforce, but Laaper believes it will be positive. Cobots will help employers fill mundane roles they struggle to find people to do and give rise to a new positions that demand a different skill set.