Robots and robotic automation brings with it incredible precision, productivity, and flexibility to any industrial process.
But robots can now offer small businesses the same opportunities to increase profitability.
YuMi is the world's first truly collaborative dual-arm industrial robot and its makers ABB believe it will fundamentally alter the types of industrial processes that can be automated with robots.
Thanks to YuMi, the traditional barriers, cages and zones are not a thing of the past.
It can work safely side- by-side with humans and are able to perform tasks with a high degree of precision.
It is outfitted with padded arms, which allow for a soft landing if it nudges its human counterpart.
Equally as important, these robots can be operated and reprogrammed by most anyone to easily meet a new need as production requirements change.
YuMi is able to perform the motions required in Small-Parts-Assembly within a very small space while maintaining a human-like reach.
This is critical to minimizing the footprint on the factory floor and makes it possible to install it in the work stations currently used only by humans.
In India, the growth potential of the robotics industry is tremendous.
Robot density - the number of robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees, there, is less than 10.
This contrasts with other countries in the region like Japan and Korea where robot density is between 300 and 400.
Robots like YuMi are specifically designed to meet the flexible and agile production needs of the consumer electronics industry–and this might have significant impact for India as it tries to become a mobile phone manufacturing hub.
Surprisingly, much of the technology in robotics that this global conglomerate uses are made in India.
Rao predicts that the future belongs to those companies who can have bespoke offerings on a base product.
