Collaborative Robot (Cobot)

Overview

A collaborative robot, or cobot, is a lightweight six-axis arm designed to share a workspace with people instead of being locked behind a safety fence. It achieves that through force feedback rather than barriers: every joint measures its own torque, so the robot can sense an unexpected contact and stop or yield before it injures someone. The same sensing lets an operator grab the arm and physically push it through a motion to teach a path, no robotics expertise required. Cobots are used for machine tending, assembly, screwdriving, and pick-and-place at the smaller payloads where a person and a robot naturally work side by side.

How it works

The arm is a stack of identical Modular Joint modules joined by aluminium Link Tube tubes, mounted on a Mounting Base. Each joint is a complete actuator in one housing. A Frameless Servo Motor, a rotor-and-stator kit with no separate casing, drives a Harmonic Reducer strain-wave gearbox. Two encoders read position: one on the motor for commutation and one after the reducer (Output-Side Encoder) that reports true joint angle so the safety system can cross-check the two and catch a fault. A Joint Torque Sensor, a strain-gauged spoke wheel, measures the torque the joint actually delivers, which is what makes force control and collision detection possible. A spring-applied Safety Brake holds each axis when power is cut, and an in-joint Joint Drive Board closes the control loops locally.

The links and joints are hollow, so a single Internal Cabling bus-and-power cable threads through the whole arm with nothing exposed. The wrist ends in a Tool Flange carrying a tool I/O connector for grippers and sensors. The arm plugs into a Control Box that runs motion planning and the user program on its main controller while a redundant safety board continuously enforces force, speed, and position limits. An operator drives it all from the Teach Pendant, a touchscreen tablet used to hand-guide, jog, and program the robot.