Cobots are the great equalizer
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Are robots a boon or a threat to human beings, especially when it comes to jobs?
Cobots are a boon to human beings – substituting low value add dull, dirty and dangerous (ergonomically) jobs with more exciting, value added ones like quality, cobot maintenance and programming, tool wear monitoring and generally more involved employees.
An interesting observation – countries with the highest robot density per 10K employees (South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Japan, Denmark) routinely have some of the lowest unemployment rates in the globe.
Is the robots-taking-jobs argument exaggerated, as there are still jobs waiting to be filled?
The jobs-taking argument arises with every Industrial Revolution. Industry 4.0 is no exception. ATMs did not reduce the number of bank tellers (which exploded due to lower operating costs and therefore more branch offices), but just like the onset of AI, expect to see job changes, not necessarily job losses. Simplicity is going to be the key to take all existing operators along.
While robots are adapting fast to new roles, are their human counterparts slow in doing so?
Not really. In fact quite the opposite. Humans are exceptionally versatile. Robots are not that smart unless you equip them with expensive senses like sight, touch, etc. Factories are increasingly seeing human workers being re-inserted into production units, where robots used to rule the roost, to cope with the variability introduced by mass personalisation. This has happened at major car manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes Benz, etc – enter the era of Human-Robot collaboration and hence, collaborative robots. The latest example is Tesla, where over automation led to production stoppages due to inflexibility in operations.
Compared to the advanced economies, robot penetration in India is still low. Will there be a dramatic change in the near future?
Robot usage in India is a paltry 3 per 10K workers, compared to a global average of 74. So yes, penetration is abysmally low. With the affordability of cobots at the SME level, this number is going to increase exponentially, particularly with the Government’s new initiatives for funding Industry 4.0 projects at SMEs. Cobots are “the great equalizer”!
Finally, will man and robot co-exist in harmony?
It’s happening already. With 35,000+ cobots deployed by Universal Robots, the pioneers and leaders in collaborative robots, human robot collaboration is alive and well. Even at MSMEs in India.
Pradeep David set up and is running the operations of Denmark based Universal Robots as Country Head in India. UR collaborative class robots (cobots) bring unprecedented benefits to SMEs with the fastest payback in the industry, ease of programming and installation, flexibility of usage and safe deployment – most times without the need of safety fencing.