Advances in robotics for the automotive industry
In an examination of the future challenges in robotics for the automotive industry, Dr Stefan Markus Baginski of BMW sees still a wide range of opportunities for using even more robots in automotive manufacturing.
Breathtaking advancements and innovative technological developments in industrial manufacturing have caused a substantial increase in the number of robot installations during the past four years especially in the automotive industry.
Baginski argues that capabilities of both PLCs and robot controllers have not yet been exploited to their full potential, and looks for a comparison with how extensively our mobile devices are linked together with the telephone network, social platforms and cloud services. “All these efforts are to create a better service for us and make our life much more convenient,” he says. “To adapt this to a fleet of robots is one of the challenges of the future.
“Imagine how much energy, maintenance effort, space and hardware we could save if, for example, the robot controller were just a cloud service to which all robots were connected to keep their individual program running.”
Baginski believes that this also influences another important topic which is the effort it currently takes to learn how to program and use a robot. “This still requires a lot of training and expertise. Each robot supplier has its own programming language, etc.” Baginski sees possibilities for the development of open standards as we have seen in the PLC market. In addition, the advanced human robot cooperation, which allows direct interaction between humans and robots, is just in the beginning stages and will open up new possibilities for the use of robots in automotive manufacturing
Baginski concludes that the whole robot community has to take the responsibility not just to develop technology but also change the mindset in society for new directions in automation. “To a lot of people the usage of robots still creates a sense of fear, yet at the same time they are happy to use their iPhones to automate daily activities.”
He argues that this disparity is because robot technology is not explained properly and the benefits for all are not understood by the masses. “With deeper understanding we would gain even more for the future development of robot technology.”
