Following on from my blog post outlining an A-Z of Digital, here is “A is for Automation”.

Cobots are collaborative robots that work and interact with humans.

Wikipedia defines Cobots as:

A cobot or co-robot (from collaborative robot) is a robot intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace. This is in contrast with other robots, designed to operate autonomously or with limited guidance, which is what most industrial robots were up until the decade of the 2010s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobot

Robots have been around for sometime within industries and work places mainly in manufacturing verticals. These are now moving towards being cobots with many research and development programs now underway within companies and academia to produce the next generation of cobots. From ones that help carry loads and work along side military personnel, assisting a production line assembling items alongside a skilled worker to cobots helping a medical technician with clinical research.

Robots have often been seen as a replacement for humans in many roles. Cobots, however are not, they instead work and interact with humans in various tasks and levels. Cobots have been around for the past few years, mainly in industrial workplaces such as manufacturing, automotive and supply chains. Their evolution is now bringing cobots into many other workplaces and use cases.

Source: Say ‘hello’ to your new colleague, the Cobot

Cobots will not replace jobs, but allow a different way of working to be experienced, helping to remove repetitive and tedious tasks allowing the more complex tasks and ones that need more time to be undertaken by the worker. As cobots are introduced into the workplace the adoption of new working practices will help to reduce stresses and improve the workplace.