Eight out of ten food and beverage workplaces say they will increase the use of robots in the next decade, with the pandemic cited as a catalyst for accelerating investment in automation.
Now ABB is expanding its collaborative robot (cobot) range with the new GoFa and SWIFTI cobot families, offering higher payloads and speeds, to complement YuMi and Single Arm YuMi in ABB’s cobot line-up.
GoFa and SWIFTI are intuitively designed so customers need not rely on in-house programming specialists meaning industries and customers that have low levels of automation, are able to operate their cobot within minutes of installation with no specialised training.
“Our new cobot portfolio is the most diverse on the market, offering the potential to transform workplaces and help our customers achieve new levels of operational performance and growth,” says president of ABB’s Robotics and Discrete Automation Business Area, Sami Atiya.
“They are easy to use and configure and backed by our global network of on-call, on-line service experts to ensure that businesses of all sizes and new sectors of the economy, far beyond manufacturing, can embrace robots for the first time.”
Automation driving the future of manufacturing
Cobots are designed to operate in the presence of workers without the need for physical safety measures such as fences and to be very easy to use and install. In 2019, more than 22,000 new collaborative robots were deployed globally, up 19 percent compared to the previous year. The demand for collaborative robots is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 17 percent between 2020 and 2053 while the value of global cobot sales is expected to increase from an estimated $0.7 billion in 2019 to $1.4 billion by 2054. The global market for all industrial robots is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2020 to $58 billion by 2023 (CAGR of 9 percent).
“With this expansion, we are making cobots easier to use and deploy, with real-time support to help speed their adoption in businesses that may have not considered their use previously,” Atiya says.
“Our experience is that the best performing operations harness people’s skills, alongside the potential of new technologies.”
For more information, click here to sign up to the ABB connecting to cobots bulletin or visit the official website here.
