Cobots, or Collaborative Robots, are “complex machines which work hand in hand with human beings. In a shared work process, they support and relieve the human operator.”
Cobots have vision monitoring and sensors that help them detect abnormal activity in their environment and allow robots and humans to work alongside one another. They also include force and power limitations to ensure safe collaboration with humans. These force sensors stop their motion if they detect any impact to protect humans from injury. The robots are also able to navigate and autonomously position themselves at the workstation. They are able to navigate around humans and also monitor their position in order to avoid contact. These safety precautions allow them to move amongst and around humans without collisions.
The CoBot project is a mobile platform used as a personal interface with the cobots to execute localization, navigation and multi-robot tasking. The CoBot project comes from the CORAL (Co-operate Observe Reason Act Learn) group. CORAL consists of several students and professors from Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania.