Yaskawa Motoman SDA-10In an interview with John P. Desmond of Online Newsletter Robotic Trends Craig Jennings CEO of Motoman, one of the worlds´s leading industrial robots manufacturer with nearly 200.000 robots worldwide, explained the innovative idea with a two hand industrial robot.
Motorman is targeting a new market for manual labor-intensive operations. Human tasks such as handling, manipulation and assembling can now be automated with two hand robots. The price for a dual-arm 15 axes, 20 kg payload robot is about $110.000. That price makes it very competitive with the total cost of labor i China according to Jennings. The advantages with robots are also no risk of intellectual property theft, having full flexibility to meet varying production needs, being very responsive to production changes. New applications for two hand robots are drug discovery robotics, clinical lab robotics, alternative energy production, such as solar reflector panels, humanoid robotics, aerospace.
If Jennings is right a new wave of industrial entrepreneurship and robocraft could hit local markets and revitalize local production all over the world from Kiruna to Cape Town. With one two hand intelligent robot in every workshop local production may become competitive again as an alternative to centralized mass production in low labor cost countries with all its negative consequences for humans, nature and climat.
Why not develop a tree, four, five hand robot that can do thing we never dreamed about. There is room for smarter robots in the future, be sure! Multi hand robot - a markets signal worth watching!
Read: Motoman Expands Into Humanoid Robotics: A Conversation with Craig Jennings Industrial Automation Robotics Trends
