Innovations in robotics towards intelligent, low-cost and universal tools in agile manufacturing

Today's manufacturing is exposed to simultaneous challenges: responsiveness to market turbulences while maintaining cost-effectiveness, new emerging manufacturing processes related to light-weight designs, and resource efficiency in the widest sense. Automation, typically resulting in complex, costly and inflexible systems has to respond to these challenges, even more so as small to medium sized manufacturing is dominant in Europe. In order to escape from the "automation trap" - either opt for current automation solutions or compete on the basis of lowest wages - lean and intelligent automation solutions are emerging which put industrial robotics into the center as an intelligent, low-cost and universal tool. These solutions allow continuous degrees of automation through human-robot-interaction, adaptable layouts though modularity, integrating processing and material flows, and seamless information integration.