The Robotic Arm – For Humans, By Humans

Accord­ing to a Reuters report, there is a woman in Pitts­burgh who can how move items and feed her­self using a robot­ic arm that is direct­ly con­trolled by her thoughts. This mechan­i­cal arm is part of research about brain-machine inter­fac­ing. 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, there are oth­er robot arms that have been help­ing humans for years behind the scenes. These are the artic­u­lat­ed indus­tri­al robots.

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.

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.

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.

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.