On cobot programming in industrial tasks: a test case

Collaborative robots open the way to new applications where industrial robots currently cannot be used. They are perfect for craft, non-industrial environments or schools, and to people who don't know how to program robots, like artists, designers, or students. A simplified end-user programming of the cobots allows a more flexible deployment of these machines. Originally, they were developed to contain the effort, the complexity and the cost of the robotic solutions, allowing the adoption of robots specially by small and medium-sized enterprises. However, when a cobot has to be used in an industrial environment some issues arise. This article presents an industrial application that uses a collaborative robot. The focus is on the use of the latest methods for cobot programming and on how to deal with their limitations and advantages when exploiting them in an industrial application.