Robotics on the Move – Mobile Robots

When some­one brings up the idea of mobile robot­ics, most peo­ple prob­a­bly flash to movies like The Ter­mi­na­tor, Star Wars, or even I, Robot. How­ev­er, the mobile robots that are being con­ceived today and in the near future are prob­a­bly clos­er to Wall‑E than C3PO. Mobile robots today are devel­op­ing ways to take robots off of their shelves and mount them on auto­mat­ic guid­ed vehi­cles (AGVs) to help them mobilize. 

What would these robots do? How would they be prac­ti­cal? Well, that depends on the shop. Many shops do not per­form enough actions at any one sta­tion to con­sid­er automat­ing that area. How­ev­er, if one robot could move to many dif­fer­ent sta­tions and per­form a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions, then that would def­i­nite­ly be prac­ti­cal and prof­itable. For exam­ple, instead of hav­ing a ded­i­cat­ed robot at one sta­tion that would fin­ish all of their work with­in a few hours of start­ing pro­duc­tion, and then be use­less the rest of the shift, a mobile robot mount­ed to an AGV could per­form one appli­ca­tion at one point in the pro­duc­tion line, and then move to anoth­er sta­tion in the pro­duc­tion line and per­form anoth­er application. 

Anoth­er advan­tage? Mobile robots will save man­u­fac­tur­ers quite a bit of mon­ey in the long run, espe­cial­ly if they are deter­mined to auto­mate their process­es. By invest­ing in one robot that is able to be pro­grammed to move from sta­tion to sta­tion, instead of buy­ing ded­i­cat­ed robots for each sta­tion, the com­pa­ny can save the cost of one to two more robots, while still automat­ing their process. That is a pos­si­ble sav­ings of $100,000+.

All in all, mobile robots would be a great fit for lots of dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion lines, espe­cial­ly for small­er com­pa­nies. They would save mon­ey and time, while also enhanc­ing speed and quality. 

Are you inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about robot­ic advance­ments, like mobile robots? Then you should call Robots​.com today online or at 877−762−6881.