How to Build Industrial Robots That Don’t Kill Humans
Meet the friendly 'cobots' making the assembly lines safer for humans.
This article is for subscribers only.
In June this year a robot crushed a man to death in a Volkswagen factory in Germany. The 22-year-old maintenance worker became trapped between a large robotic arm and a metal plate, in an area usually off-bounds to humans.
The tragic incident highlighted a major technological challenge: As we move towards an increasingly automated world, how do we reach a point where robots and humans can exist side-by-side, sharing space and collaborating on tasks?