Cobots, Apps and the Rise of a Global Development Community

It’s happening

Collaborative robots have done a lot more than introduce themselves as the leaders of next wave of manufacturing, they are building a community of shared expertise and developer excellence right before our eyes.

Please join our webcast on Thursday, September 22 at 2PM EST
Scaling Cobots: From One to Many; and Now…Apps!

Gaining access

Lots of good things can happen to a collaborative robot if you let a world of developers tinker with its Software Development Kit or SDK in order to come up with new applications, functionality or add-on products for cobots.

Linus Torvalds, the daddy of Linux, did it with the Linux kernel. “More than 8,000 developers have contributed to the Linux kernel,” according to the Linux Foundation. “You can find it on everything from in-flight entertainment systems to streaming video players to Google’s Android phones.”

That takes a lot of eyeballs spending lots of time on your product to accomplish. For Torvalds, it worked like a charm.

Baking in a Universal Robots cobot with thousands of manufacturers might go much faster if developers had, as with the Linux kernel, some way of writing code that is perfectly suited for their manufacturing requirements and operations.

With Universal Robots+ and +YOU, the company has opened the door for developers to develop applications for cobot arms on the UR3, UR5 and UR10 cobots; accessory components that extend capabilities for customized hardware components, software plug-ins, or a combination of both.

As Universal Robots sees it, such a development community will “reduce implementation periods, increase user comfort and reduce costs for all parties involved.”

On Thursday, September 22, Universal Robots’ Doug Peterson, will dive into the particulars of how it works, how developers can get their hands on cobots for testing or buy them at a remarkably reduced price.

Already a developer

Already with its hands deep into the Universal Robots development program is Robotiq, the Canadian end-of-arm-tooling manufacturer.

Robotiq recently announced that it has “launched a new community called DoF. This is an open community where industrial automation professionals share their know-how and get answers to accelerate their robotics projects.

DoF is meant as a medium for sharing ideas and solving automation problems. “We realized that the know-how is locked in the head of automation engineers who can’t talk to each other because they are far apart, focused on making their factory run,” explains Samuel Bouchard, CEO of Robotiq. “This is why we created this online community, to bring industrial automation pros together so they can help each other with their automation projects and stop reinventing the wheel on their own”.

Chiming in on the benefits of DoF is Matt Bush, COO of Hirebotics: “Having access to free valuable resources and insights from professionals in all fields related to robotics made the implementation of our various automation projects faster and easier.”

On Thursday, September 22, we’ll also have on hand Sam Bouchard, Robotiq’s president, who will explain the genesis of DoF, how it works, and how it will grow in effectiveness as it is used.

Join us for our webcast as we ask Universal Robots and Robotiq, what’s up?