Since its release, manufacturers have come to know all about Rethink Robotics’ “Baxter” collaborative robot (cobot), with its unique “human-like” design that includes a face, torso and two arms – but what about Sawyer?
In the above video, we talk about the technology and advantageous behind the one-armed Sawyer cobot with Peter Martinez, field sales manager at Rethink Robotics.
“Sawyer takes from the DNA that made Baxter successful, such as flexible joints, training by demonstration and the ability to work side-by-side with people, but puts those features in a more capable hardware platform with improved precision, longer reach and a wider variety of possible applications,” said Martinez.
Sawyer was designed more as a generic tool than a specialist project, Martinez explained.
With a variety of customized grippers, Sawyer can tackle applications from CNC machine tending to electronics assembly.
“We can provide tool-plate drawings to our customers, and either our channel distribution partner network or the end-users themselves can customize end-of-arm tooling as needed,” Martinez said. “The tool-plate is very easy to change, with only two screws to allow customers to easily move Sawyer between applications in their plant as needed.”
Sawyer also comes embedded with a Cognex 3700 series camera in the wrist for applications such as part identification.
“We’re going to be taking the capabilities of this camera one step further with software updates in the future that will allow for vision-based picking, recognition of things like barcodes and macro-inspection,” Martinez explained.
“We also have a camera in the head that we’re not yet leveraging, but we have plans for the purposes of part presentation, presence or absence and reading stack lights or screens, so we have some forward-thinking extensibility in Sawyer’s Intera software platform.”
For more information, watch the video above and visit Rethink Robotics website.
For a closer look at Baxter and number of other cobots, check out The Collaborative Robot Buyer’s Guide.