Evaluating Cobots for Final Assembly

Collaborative robots becomes more and more common in lab environment and soon also in industry. In order to create resource- and volume flexibility, dynamic and smart automation could be seen as an answer. This paper has investigated the collaborative robots UR3 and UR5 for O-ring assembly and final assembly, compared to the current state which is performed manually. The methodology Dynamo++ was used for measurement and analysis in terms of LoA (cognitive and physical), cycle-time and quality. Furthermore, automation strategy, safety and easiness of programming was investigated. Results show that collaborative robots have great potential in the middle product volume area. A lot of time, layout space and money could be saved with these solutions. However, standards and safety has to be investigated further in order to reach its fully potential.