How human-robot partnerships will remake manufacturing
Anders Billesø Beck, vice president of Strategy and Innovation at Universal Robots, thinks collaborative robots can help workers avoid injury and drudgery. Here’s how this “ideal tool” could transform tomorrow’s factories.
Industrial robotics have been a pillar of mass manufacturing for decades now, but recent breakthroughs in human-robot cooperation are taking productivity to another level and transforming factory jobs. Robots can make manufacturing safer and more efficient, but they also make human work more stimulating and rewarding, says Anders Billesø Beck, vice president of Strategy and Innovation at market leader Universal Robots. That’ll be crucial for inspiring and hiring the next generation of talent.
Christopher Good: Put simply, what is the advantage of using robots in manufacturing?
Anders Beck: At heart, robotics brings us the opportunity to leverage human capital in a different way. It gives us the opportunity to leverage people where people work really well — managing the hard tasks, the ones where you need creativity and problem-solving — while still getting the efficiency required for manufacturing to be profitable, in 2023 and beyond.
Good: Industrial robotics have been on the scene for decades. How are breakthroughs in AI changing the ways they function?
Beck: One example of where we’re seeing progress is quality inspection. Doing that is really hard for an engineer in the classical way, because you have to physically look at [the product] or engineer all that stuff in. When you're doing quality inspection based on AI, you just need to show it what “good” looks like. So, it lends itself well to be adopted by the non-specialists and the non-experts, because the actual problem-solving becomes more intuitive.
“At heart, robotics brings us the opportunity to leverage human capital in a different way. It gives us the opportunity to leverage people where people work really well — managing the hard tasks, the ones where you need creativity and problem-solving.”
Good: What benefits do collaborative robots, or “cobots,” bring to human employees?
Anders Beck: Right now, we're struggling to find people that are willing to do manufacturing work. And we need to be making manufacturing an interesting place to work, so that in five years, young people will aspire to seek a career within manufacturing. It doesn't mean that every person who works in a company needs to be a trained engineer. It's more like investing the time in growing the right skills. We have a lot of evidence showing that it also will bring a happier, more engaged workforce and, ultimately, growth both for the employees and the employer.
Good: A cobot doesn’t have body language or speech. So how do workers get used to working with these robots?
Beck: Cobots sparked these ethical discussions around man and machine. Some of our early competitors even experimented with putting a face on their robots. But the way we always thought about it is that a cobot is just your ideal tool. It's the tool you like using when you get up in the morning, that you appreciate working with on a daily basis. But we don't necessarily see it as a colleague. Of course, a lot of our customers name their robot, because they like the value that it brings, but it’s not something you would talk to on your coffee break, right?
Good: When it comes to productivity, how do robots change the amount of people you need to complete tasks?
Beck: It varies quite a lot from task to task, but the general trend is that single employees will be able to manage a broader amount of work. Welding is a good example, where you can have an experienced welder program the robot, initiate the weld, and then start on the next task. And on top of doubling productivity, the type of work that's done is the more meaningful work.
Good: How do you see cobots becoming a consumer or DIY technology in the future?
Beck: It's a market we are looking at. We’ve done a lot of work with educational institutions around robotics. It's a very creative way of teaching, though I don't know if we will have a robot in every house. My take is that technologies often materialize in ways we don't really expect. There's no doubt that AI and robotic capabilities are going to spread to many of the things that we use today. The interesting part is going to be in which ways.
| ← Read previous How companies can mine technology for the energy transition | Read next → |