In the making of advanced gripping systems, a huge number of product versions are manufactured and provided in different batch sizes. So far, the grippers have been created manually on traditional assembly workstations. Associated with this are one-sided physical strain, the danger of injuries, for example during deburring, and comparatively high costs for purely manual activity. The goal of one HRC project at the SCHUNK Smart Factory was to use HRC systems to multiply employee flexibility, minimize workplace monotony, improve ergonomics and reduce manual cost per item.
 
Instead of completely automating processes, limited automation is currently gaining in benefit, in which the strengths of humans and the strengths of robotics are brought together synergistically. The driving makes behind human-robot collaboration (HRC) are easing the staff of disturbing or monotonous work steps, improving ergonomics in the workplace, especially against the background of demographic change, making work processes more flexible, boosting efficiency and optimizing logistics, handling and loading processes. This need for change also affects the production of SCHUNK, the competence leader for gripping systems and clamping technology.


This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com