Cobot (Collaborative Robot)

The reason cobots matter to UK manufacturers right now is access. A traditional robotic welding cell or palletising system starts at £60,000 or more and is built around a specific process. Once it's in, changing it is a project in itself.

Cobots lower that barrier. They're generally quicker to deploy and easier to move between tasks. The don't always require a full safety enclosure (though a proper risk assessment is still required before you operate one without guarding, don't just assume that because it's marketed as a cobot that it is automatically fine to use without guarding). To see if a cobot palletiser is right for you or if you need a more traditional robotic palletising cell, give our guide a read.

For smaller manufacturers running high-mix, lower-volume production, cobots make automation commercially viable in a way that traditional cells don't. They're not always the right answer: if throughput is the priority and your process is highly repeatable, a conventional industrial cell will usually deliver better ROI. But for businesses that need flexibility first, cobots are worth a serious look.

Cobots are typically 6-axis robot arms, the same basic configuration as most industrial robots. What makes them different is the safety architecture. They contain torque sensors in each joint that measure the forces acting on the arm in real time. If the cobot contacts an unexpected object, including a person, it stops within milliseconds. This is what allows them to operate closer to people without a full safety cage in certain applications.

Programming a cobot is also usually simpler than programming a traditional industrial robot (not always and programming software is coming on massively for industrial robots) . Most modern cobots support lead-through teaching, this is where an operator will physically move the arm through the path it needs to follow and the robot controller records the movement. Some also support tablet-based or no-code programming interfaces.

In welding applications, the cobot holds a welding torch and follows a programmed path across a joint. A cell would include a wire feeder, power source, and shielding gas just as with a conventional robotic welding cell. The cobot welding robot replaces the industrial robot arm and controller; everything else in the cell is broadly the same.

For a full guide on UK cobot applications, including costs and lead times, check out our full cobot guide.