People with disabilities should also benefit from robots in the workplace

The design of collaborative work environments in which people and machines work together is increasingly focused in robotics. Fenced industrial robots have long been welding, punching, drilling and milling behind red or yellow lines, the traditional variant of production automation. By using sensors, cameras, local networks and mobile platforms, sensitive lightweight robots, the so-called “cobots”, can now act relatively freely in factory and warehouses. They are used as supporting tools, bring workpieces, equip them independently or help with a wide variety of production steps as “third hand”.