JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #139 - March/April 2021 - 46

FEATURE robotics
industrial jobs from Europe was clearly
noticeable. Corona is accelerating this structural change in manufacturing companies
in Europe. Production jobs are being cut or
relocated at short notice. This reduction in
production jobs cannot be stopped, but its
effects can be put into perspective. The prerequisite for this is an increase in productivity
through measures that are no longer based on
the evolutionary pattern that has been tried
and tested since the industrial revolution and
used worldwide, but strive for revolutionary
production processes. Climate change also
yearns for revolutionary steps. Those could
be the AI-controlled interlocking of material
and process data, which can be ideally used,
especially in multi-material lightweight
construction products.

Sustainability is an important
criterion when deciding which

Tom Mathias,
President & CEO, Omron Robotics and
Safety Technologies, Inc.

JEC spoke with Tom Mathias from Omron,
a leading provider of mobile robots for
industrial applications to discover how
manufacturers assess the implications of the
current pandemic on future business.
Omron is the world's leading provider of
mobile robots for industrial applications,
and was the first company to launch a commercial mobile robot into the marketplace,
in 2013. The newest mobile robot, the
HD- 1500, offers a solution to automate
complex and dangerous tasks.
JEC Composites Magazine: Robotics are currently facing a tremendous demand and will
play a vital role in automating production processes in post-Corona times. Where do you
see the key challenging future research & development in robotics?

Tom Mathias: Let's turn it this way:
" How has COVID-19 changed the land-

materials to choose
In general, the material must meet the technical requirements while being cost-effective.
Hybrid materials are more and more often
the materials of choice but their processing
requires even more complex processes, robotics and connection technology that need
to be adapted to them and, in some cases, are
still to be developed. In the case of high-performance materials such as CFRP, the
availability of the materials continues to play
a limiting role. In addition, sustainability is
an important criterion when deciding which
materials to choose. The entire value chain
must therefore be assessed and LCA data of
the products produced must be compared.

AI-controlled robots will play
an important role in the near future
The use of AI, the handling of big data,
scape of robotics automation " - the biggest
impact we've seen is not necessarily a fundamental change in market needs, but instead
simply an acceleration in the pre-COVID
trends (e.g. consumer on-line shopping)
which drives the urgency to solve key challenges such as lack of labor and small volume
/ high mix production. Take, for example,
a production environment which requires
pallet-size logistics in a 2 or 3 shift operation
- currently performed mostly by humans,
either with forklifts or manually. Omron's
HD-1500 robot, launched in July 2020, addresses precisely these requirements offering
a safe, reliable, and flexible factory and retail
logistics solution to help our customers address this accelerating shift in post-COVID
consumer behavior. It can automate tasks,
thus reducing the risk of injury. With the
current coronavirus pandemic, the world is
experiencing a major turning point with how
society conducts business due to new global health concerns. Employees throughout
the world must maintain social distancing in
manufacturing sites, limit business trips, and
work remotely. As a result, the demand of
more advanced automation and mobile robots has been increasing, along with a growing demand for remote operations.
Could you explain the main features of the
latest HD-1500 mobile robot with special fo-

jec composites magazine / N°139 March - April 2021

the recognition of the relevant data or the
highly complex interlinking of material and
process data however are skills, that are not
yet or insufficiently implemented. If the
manufacturing economy in Europe wants to
face the challenges of the global market, demographic development and climate-neutral
production, it can fall back on a very differentiated and branch-specific variety of skills in
European sciences with a high degree of application orientation. They provide the basis
for developing climate-neutral industrial jobs
that are competitive in global comparison.
AI-controlled robots in the broadest sense,
which act depending on the situation via
sensors and thus enable the interlinking of
material and process data in multi-material
lightweight construction, but which can also
be used in completely different areas, will
play an important role.

cus on the human-machine
interaction and
safety aspects?

T. M.: One

" At Omron, we recognize we
can be part of a climate-neutral future by continuing to
design and deliver robotics
solutions which are easy to
install, simple to redeploy,
and easy to maintain. "

of the often
overlooked, yet
absolutely crit " The 2 greatest challenges
ical aspects of
we face in manufacturing
mobile robotics
over
the next 30 years are an
adoptions
is
aging
workforce and shifting
not necessarily
consumer behavior. "
the hard specs
including safety (i.e. safety
zones, stopping distance, etc.) but instead,

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #139 - March/April 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #139 - March/April 2021