Collaborative robots are growing rapidly and expanding into various industries, and the market is expected to reach $9.2 billion by 2028.

At the Advanced Robot Conference held by the Electronic Times in Gangnam, Seoul on the 6th, strategies for fostering advanced robot talents, as well as domestic collaborative robot and wearable robot companies, were shared.

According to Sang-soo Park, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, the hottest topic in recent domestic and international robot industry trends is collaborative robots. Unlike industrial robots, collaborative robots help people work in the same space. Compared to industrial robots, they are lighter, safer, and easier to use.

Collaborative robots recorded sales of approximately 39,000 units worldwide as of 2021. Although their share is still low compared to manufacturing robots, it has more than doubled from 2.8% in 2017 to 7.5%, and has shown an average annual growth rate of 36.8% from 2017 to 2021. Markets and Markets forecasts that collaborative robots will grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate of 41.5% from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $9.2 billion in 2028.

At the conference that day, Angel Robotics Managing Director Jin-ho Son discussed the overall direction of the robot business.

Industrial robots are growing in the electrical and electronics sectors, including the existing automobile sector, and service robots are also expected to expand their growth step by step and surpass industrial robots with the activation of AI and 5G technologies. Service robots are expected to require products and industrial strategies linked to specialized services based on the core competencies of large companies in industry, commerce, medicine, and public sectors, as they are linked to national strategies. Wearable robots are also expected to have growth potential in the healthcare field.

Managing Director Son said, “Industrial robots must focus on the captive market to secure competitiveness in new growth areas that compete with the existing Big 4, and service robots must simultaneously discover product and service plans based on core customer values and secure price competitiveness.”

In particular, he argued that system manufacturing capabilities that can unify the hardware platform of robots are essential for the overall growth of the robot industry.

■ Doosan Robotics to Release Collaborative Robot SW Platform in the Second Half of the Year
Doosan Robotics Managing Director Jae-Seok Lee presented the latest trends in collaborative robots and explained the characteristics of Doosan Robotics collaborative robots.

The hardware of Doosan Robotics' collaborative robot consists of a controller, robot arm, and teaching pendant, and the software consists of a TP UI program, control program, and robot arm control program.

Doosan Robotics' collaborative robots are mainly used in the automotive, manufacturing, and medical industries. They perform application tasks such as electric vehicle charging, bolting, polishing, welding, palletizing, machine tending, pick and place, drilling, and coating. In the service sector, examples include noodle machines, fryers, food factories, coffee manufacturing, beer, ice cream, luxury, camera photography, and media art.

“Major collaborative robot manufacturers have a common concern about making it easier for non-programmable users to use collaborative robots,” said the executive director.

To this end, Doosan Robotics is about to launch ‘DART Suite,’ a software platform that allows for easy design of collaborative robot functions.

Dart Suite is expected to simplify the development, distribution, and execution stages. Applications developed with DART-IDE are uploaded to the store, and then downloaded and used by robots.

For example, if you want to do palletizing with a 3D camera, you can download the 3D and palletizing apps and combine the two. It can be run on mobile, PC, Mac, etc., and can be continuously updated with AI functions in the future.

“We have been working on Dart Suite for several years to make it as easy to use as a smartphone app, and it is now nearing completion,” said the managing director.

Meanwhile, Doosan Robotics is the No. 1 domestic and No. 5 global collaborative robot company with sales of KRW 45 billion in 2022, and has the largest payload model, such as the 25 kg H series. The No. 1 global collaborative robot company is Universal Robots, with a market share of over 50%.