Collaborative robot adoption across industries
The Australian manufacturing sector has so far made very limited use of collaborative robots (cobots), despite their potential to augment human capabilities and improve safety and efficiency. We propose to examine other industries across Australia to identify to what extent they have adopted cobots. We would seek to identify the drivers of adoption, along with barriers to it, and how any such barriers were overcome. To what extent have these various industries adapted their processes to accommodate cobot technology, and what was required for them to do this? What (re)-training was required for workers? How specific or generalisable are the required skills? An economic framework would consider similarities and differences across sectors, including firm size and market structure. We would also seek to build on an emerging collaboration between CSIRO and Siemens in Germany to ask the same questions of the German manufacturing industry. This knowledge would then be applied (and shared via publication) to consider what pathways and processes would help Australia’s manufacturing industry realise the opportunities of cobotics.
The project will be part of the Data61’s collaborative intelligence (CINTEL) Future Science Platform (FSP) that will develop the science that enables human intelligence and technology to work together across multiple domains, driving sustainable productivity growth and improving both the quantity and quality of jobs for human workers.
Associated Researchers