Abstract (eng)
Contrary to traditional industrial robots, collaborative robots, or so-called Cobots, are created to interact directly with a human worker in a shared workspace without a safety distance. This opens up various opportunities for automation, which were previously not possible, making cobots one of the most prospective technologies of modern intelligent manufacturing and aligning with the overall concept of Industry 4.0. Due to their affordability and ease of programming, cobots are especially appealing for SMEs and are also suitable for high-mix low- volume production. While the original usage was mainly in the automotive industry, the application of cobots nowadays is neither limited to a certain industry nor to a specific application. This master’s thesis offers an overview about cobots and their history as well as a brief analysis about the cobots that are currently on the market and what restrictions they must fulfill. Moreover, a classification scheme for the types of collaboration between the human operator and the cobot is introduced. On behalf of this classification scheme current cobot solutions in manufacturing are presented and real use cases are analyzed regarding their grade of collaboration and the production system they are deployed in. Further, cobots' influence on typical production planning problems are evaluated and the possibilities they might offer in the future are described.