Robots are changing the way we work. They are handling repetitive and dangerous tasks, giving us time and energy to think and innovate more. Universal Robot is at the forefront of technology, enabling human-robot collaboration that makes industrial automation safe, easy and accessible to businesses of all sizes, who are able to automate and streamline repetitive industrial processes. TimesTech interviewed Mr. Sougandh KM, Country Manager for India, Universal Robots to learn more about cobots and their uses.
Read the excerpts from the interview here:
TimesTech: What was the need for collaborative robots and how they are structurally different from isolated robots?
Sougandh: Consider an application like an engine block assembly or a gear assembly or say anything, which involves the vision, human intelligence and the repetitive job of a robot. So, what generally robots do is take care of a repeated task. Anything, which is dumb, anything which is dirty and anything dangerous can be automated. What we bring on board is something to say that why don’t you look at a collaborative robot? Not like an external tool but an assistive tool.
It’s more like a tool that can help you bring more of your efficiency. It’s going to be next to you. It’s not gonna hurt you. It’s not going to pin you to the wall. But then it’s going to be next to you as an assistant, as a third arm to do some jobs more precisely because it’s going to do what is taught, repeatedly on and on and on. Human intelligence is required to program, run, and maintain it.
So, a combination of both human intelligence and robotic repeatability brings much more efficiency to manufacturers and factories of today, making them future-ready. In 10 years from today, this will be more like a laptop, which you and I probably got in our colleges. This will be something which will be so common in tomorrow’s factories. Collaborative robots as such is a technology coming from Universal Robots. They’re the robot and human intelligence combination working together to drive better efficiency in manufacturing.
TimesTech: What are the key features that Universal Robots provide to its customers?
Sougandh: Universal Robots is built around one vision; let’s build a world wherein people work with robots and not like a robot. The key feature is when you bring in technology of that kind, it has to be simple, it’s easy to integrate. Anyone should be able to do it.
It’s almost like a smartphone, if you and I get a smartphone today we will be able to program it in such easy ways and anyone in this generation is able to play around with the smartphone which exactly is where Universal Robots fits in.
We enable automation to be accessible to all. So, it’s a simple tool. It’s really easy to do the simplest of jobs which are dirty and dangerous. It can be simply automated in no time. In short time intervals, you are able to bring automation to your factories and make them future-ready. So, our key feature largely would be revolving around easy-to-integrate, plug-n-play, simple use of electricity; a single-phase power is able to plug and play this.
TimesTech: How Universal Robots is taking advantage of modern technologies like AI and ML to provide a better product to its customers.
Sougandh: Globally we saw about 67 percent of the companies are shifting towards AI robotics, ML and all of these technologies. All of these started to make a lot of noise in the market in a positive way. People are thinking of automating things. Not just human intelligence, you need robotic intelligence or artificial intelligence which are better for logical decision-making.
A robot is a tool that is designed to do something repeatedly. AI is a tool that has much more aspects. It’s driven by a problem-solving mechanism. It could be about planning, learning, visualization, perception and language. All of these are built around here which is then translated to ML where the machine is able to learn these and replicate what has been taught. So, this is a beautiful connection wherein AI, ML and robots and work together in order to solve a larger cost.
Now, what we do in Universal Robots is design a tool that is absolutely open to incorporating all these technologies. AI can be plugged into a robot making it AI-enabled and we can plug each application into these robots and allow them to learn and work along with machines. We strongly feel a combination of robotics, AI, and ML is the future.
TimesTech: US has asked its companies to stop supplying AI chips to China. How these things are impacting the Universal Robots supply chain?
Sougandh: When the global market is facing these challenges, we are no exception. We also go through such challenges. However, when we have our production lines in Denmark. We are still in a better position when it comes to chips, we have tackled it in the right way.
So, we managed to do a pretty decent job to keep our production and supply chain solid. We will continue to manage and supply robots within a timeline of close to four weeks.
TimeTech: How Cobots are transforming manufacturing sectors?
Sougandh: So, if you see a global perspective, there’s something called technology maturity. A lot of it starts from the European markets or the Japanese Market etc where the technology starts to grow and then it slowly passes to the rest of the world. India is no different. India also has a strong share of this happening which is where we are today noticing a difference coming from the government with the PLI scheme and all these parameters to boost Manufacturing in India.
We see a lot of this happening in India because manufacturing is shifting towards India. So, all of these are a factor, why we should have a strong presence in India, for us to deliver to the customers in India. What we are generally called for is automotive which usually absorbs a lot of robots and automation requirements, followed by the basic necessity for all of us, the Food and Beverage industry and further FMCG industry. So, these three segments largely draw to a lot of absorption of collaborative robots.
There’s a new vertical coming around IT services. So, a lot of software companies in India are leveraging automation and robots to do a lot of their AI and ML-based applications but one of the key domains which we also see as significant supply is the Universities. I think the students will want to see future Technologies coming into their campuses.
So, these are the four of five verticals where we see significant absorption of collaborative robots.
TimesTech: How Cobots can be a game-changer for the MSME industry?
Sougandh: Cobots are a game changer for the MSME segment because today what happens to MSMEs is it’s an aspirational jump to be playing with the league of the big guys. Big manufacturers in the same domain could be manufacturing the same products as what an MSME is doing. When a larger player is in the same Market, MSMEs are able to adopt low-cost ownership tools, like collaborative robots and up the game to be on the same Level Playing Field.
If I was running a MSME, for me a cobot is the low-cost ownership tool. I don’t have much maintenance on it, I won’t have her wisdom, integration scheme is really fast which technically is to say when I go back to a traditional automatic, I might think of six months to plug in a robot and run it wherein collaborative robot can be plugged in within half a day.
The same thing is happening with the larger Enterprise but for a larger enterprise, it’s about sustaining their growth, sustaining their business, sustaining their order pipeline for a longer term.
TimesTech: What are the Universal Robots’ future projections moving forward?
Sougandh: Universal Robots started way back in 2005 as a Pioneer who invented this technology called collaborative robots. Since then, it’s been a great run for us. Today, we’ve been consistent in growing, almost about 30-40 percent year-on-year. So, we are a double-digit growth company. Last year, we were almost 37 billion USD in business. Globally we have 50,000 collaborative robots running and a significant share of that we have in India. In the coming years, the technology peak will happen in India. Technology will get to start adopted in India which means the trajectory for growth is yet to start. The moment it starts, it would be a massive segment for us. We will continue to invest and grow in India. So, we’ve seen a very positive trend, we will be seeing about 30-40 percent growth easily around here in the following years.
