Why every manufacturing student needs hands-on cobot experience
President, Productive Robotics
This is like preaching to the choir. You’re an educator. You get it. If you can’t get your students ready and qualified to join the workforce, they don’t succeed. If they don’t succeed then your program doesn’t either.
We all get it. We read the papers. We watch the news. We hear it everywhere. The only way America competes in the world is with automation. So what’s automation? It’s a lot of things, but mostly now, it’s robots. And not the robots of yesterday. Those big, hard to program, dangerous beasts in cages. Not the army of robots you see painting cars as they go down the line. No, the robots of today, and tomorrow are “cobots”. That’s slang for Collaborative Robots. These are the robots that are taking over factories all across America (and other countries too). These robots work next to people in a factory, helping them (in other words, “Collaborating” with them). When your students hit the workforce and they’re asked if they have “cobot experience” (and they will be), what will they say? (Hint: You know the answer that lands the job).
What does “teaching cobots” entail? Well, it’s not really about “programming”. The first generation of cobots offered “easy” programming. The next generation offers no programming at all. So if they don’t have to learn how to “program” what do they learn? They learn how to apply the cobot to make it do real work. It’s about understanding what a cobot does well, vs. what a person does well. It’s about how to set up the cobot in a “real world” application. If they can do that, then getting the job is a done deal.
We offer the most advanced, most flexible, and simplest cobots that require no programming. As the developer of cobots (which we use ourselves in our own manufacturing) we have developed a “real world” curriculum. Our curriculum includes CNC machine tending, and also integrates laser cutting as it teaches students how to create fixtures and accessories that allow the robot to do real work. Our curriculum is both written and on video and includes a certification which the students can take with them.
Give us a call 805-244-9300 and tell us about your program. What do you offer? Would it be helpful to you and your students to add cobot applications? Let’s talk
