Collaborative Robots and Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0)

Collaborative robots have lately been extremely relevant to the domain of production and manufacturing industry after the arrival of Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 (IR 4.0). Collaborative robots have evolved as one of the key drivers in Industry 4.0 and they have advanced substantially within the last couple of decades. In comparison to the industrial robots, collaborative robots offer increased productivity, flexibility, versatility and safety. Collaborative robots are designed to execute tasks alongside the human workforce while sharing the same working space as colleagues, offering greater mobility and flexibility. Collaborative robots allow for a physical interaction with humans in a shared workspace to execute production, manufacturing and assembly tasks. These machines are designed to be reprogrammed easily, even by personnel without any programming background. Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) between humans and collaborative robots provides promising methods to achieve increased productivity with reduced production costs by combining the decision-making ability of humans along with the repeatability and strength of robots. This article reviews the significance of the collaborative robots today and also presents an insight into their future potential.