By James Taylor, general manager of Americas, OnRobot
If you needed to buy a device to provide transportation from point A to point B, you wouldn’t buy a motor and then try to turn it into a vehicle. But many manufacturers who need a device to load and unload machines or stack pallets take exactly that approach when they buy a robot arm.
That’s especially true of manufacturers who are the primary targets for the ease-of-use, DIY marketing claims from many robot providers.
Unfortunately, what these manufacturers end up with – for tens of thousands of dollars – is just a robotic arm. It’s a component. An important one, certainly, but the device they need to tend their machine or stack their pallets is a complete robotic system. That includes – at a minimum – the robot arm, one or more grippers, user interface, and programming. [Read more…] about Opinion: Turnkey robotic systems are already behind the times