The Robot Arm: For Humans, By Humans

Accord­ing to an arti­cle from Wired, a man received a robot­ic arm that could move items and let him expe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tion of touch — all con­trolled by his brain. This robot arm is a part of research about brain machine inter­fac­ing (BMI). Sci­en­tists believe that this inter­face could bypass nerve dam­age and help par­a­lyzed mus­cles to work again.

While these med­ical robot­ic arms are break­throughs that could help many par­a­lyzed and ampu­ta­tion patients in the future, oth­er robot arms have been help­ing humans for years behind the scenes. These are the artic­u­lat­ed indus­tri­al robots.

Artic­u­lat­ed Robot Arms

Artic­u­lat­ed robots usu­al­ly have 4 – 6 axes that are moved by elec­tric motors. These robots are built from the base, and they too act almost like human arms – they have a wrist, elbow, and shoul­der. The only dif­fer­ence is that instead of being made of mus­cle, skin, and bone, they are made of alu­minum, steel, or cast iron.

These robot arms help humans out three-fold: they take over tedious work from human work­ers, they save man­u­fac­tur­ers mon­ey, and they improve pro­duc­tion, which gets prod­ucts to con­sumers faster.

Take over tedious work from human workers

Robot­ic arms per­form many tasks for human work­ers like pick and place, pal­letiz­ing, and oth­er mate­r­i­al han­dling appli­ca­tions that can be dull and injury-induc­ing. They also per­form tasks like weld­ing and mate­r­i­al removal that pro­duce fumes and par­ti­cles that can be haz­ardous to humans. Over­all, they tack­le jobs that are unsafe for humans and that humans may not want to do themselves.

Save man­u­fac­tur­ers mon­ey and improve productivity

These robot arms can also increase pro­duc­tion, which saves man­u­fac­tur­ers mon­ey and push­es out prod­ucts to con­sumers. They have reduced cycle times and increased repeata­bil­i­ty that can’t be matched by man­u­al appli­ca­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, robots don’t need sick days or vaca­tion time, so they can work 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Robots​.com, an inte­gra­tor of robot­ic arms from KUKA, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and Fanuc, offers cus­tomers sev­er­al robot arm mod­els that can be cus­tomized to fit all of the customer’s needs and spec­i­fi­ca­tions. For more infor­ma­tion about automa­tion inte­gra­tion and robot­ic arms, con­tact Robots​.com today online or at 877−762−6881.