There’s a new face in the world of industrial robotics serving small and mid-sized businesses.
Sawyer, a new, one-arm robot from Rethink Robotics, joins counterpart Baxter, which was released two years ago. Together, the company believes it can address 90% of manufacturing tasks that could otherwise not be feasibly automated with traditional solutions.
Weighing 42 lbs, Sawyer features an 8.8 lb payload, with 7 degrees of freedom and a 1-meter reach that can maneuver into the tight spaces and varied alignments of work cells designed for humans.
Its high-resolution force sensing, embedded at each joint, enables Rethink Robotics' compliant motion control, which allows the robot to "feel" its way into fixtures or machines, even when parts or positions vary. This enables an adaptive precision that is unique to the robotics industry and allows Sawyer to work effectively in semi-structured environments.
Sawyer also features an embedded vision system, which includes a camera in its head to perform applications requiring a wide field of view and a Cognex camera with a built-in light source in its wrist for precision vision applications. Sawyer's vision system enables the Robot Positioning System for dynamic re-orientation, and over time will support more advanced features that are inherent to the Cognex system, such as barcode scanning and object recognition.
More on Sawyer, the new face of industrial automation on New Equipment Digest.
New Equipment Digest is an IndustryWeek companion site with Penton’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain Group.
