How to Build Industrial Robots That Don’t Kill Humans

Meet the friendly 'cobots' making the assembly lines safer for humans.

Making Robots and Humans Work Better Together

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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?