Page 52 - Packaging News Mar-Apr 2020

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AUTOMATION & ROBOTICS | www.packagingnews.com.au | March-April 2020
Rebuilding Australia with robots
Collaborative robots can play a part in rebuilding the economy in the wake of the destructive bushfires.
get. With increasing interest in auto- mated agriculture, cobots can offer an effective solution. According to a recent report, the market for agricul- tural robots is expected to reach $35bn within the next five years.
“Cobots can prove their agricul- tural worth by assisting producers in getting their businesses back up and running faster and more effi- ciently,” Adams says.
He notes that UR cobots can be applied to a number of requirements within the agriculture and food processing sector. Robots are used in planting, seeding, fertilising, irrigation, weeding, thinning, prun- ing, harvesting, and milking applications.
The company prides itself on the cobot’s ability to handle delicate agricultural processes and prod- ucts. Such an example can be found in the dairy industry, where a UR robot arm mounted to a small pallet jack is used to disinfect and milk cows. This cuts labour costs and time taken to complete the job. The robot occupies no more space than a human milker and doesn’t require any safety caging.
Another application where cobots can be implemented is in the pack- aging of goods that are sent to mar- ket. Adams notes one case study of a UR10 robot, installed at a food man- ufacturer. The robot worked inde- pendently to pack vanilla cream bags into cartons, but also formed part of a network that includes a car- ton erector, a carton sealer, and a fill- ing machine. “This is one of the real benefits of cobots – they can work alongside workers and form part of your factory process.”
Collaborative robots are also ideal for hygienic food processing environ- ments, where it can operate around the clock during seasonal periods of high production and can be easily redeployed to new applications as needed, helping local farmers reach their production goals faster.
A LOCAL SUCCESS STORY
Developed by the Queensland Univer- sity of Technology (QUT) in partner- ship with UR, Harvey, a robotic har- vester combines state-of-the-art robotic
WITH an estimated 12.35m acres of land and 2500 homes and businesses having been destroyed in the fires that ravaged the landscape this summer, Australia is now faced with the arduous task
of rebuilding the country.
While this might seem like an
insurmountable task, the fires also bring new opportunities to the adja- cent industries involved in helping rebuild the homes, buildings, and farmland that were lost in the fire, giving an opportunity to jumpstart the economy. This is particularly true in agriculture, which accounted for 14 per cent of the total land area that was burned by the bushfires. By mid-January, an estimated 820,000 ha of agricultural land had been destroyed across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
RISING FROM THE ASHES
Collaborative robot manufacturer Universal Robots (UR) believes that while this tragic event has left a trail of destruction, companies may be able to speed up the process of rebuilding by
implementing technological advance- ments across the spectrum.
With applications ranging from packaging and palletising, assembly, welding, and product handling, UR cobots can tackle those tedious tasks that require superhuman abilities to repeat the same movement over and over again for many hours with exactly the same precision. Cobots have been deployed across a range of industries and have become increas- ingly common in manufacturing environments.
“A big benefit UR cobots hold in this rebuilding process is that they pro- vides manufacturers and industry with the ability to act fast, increase productivity, profits and offer higher quality products,” Darrell Adams, head of SEAO at UR, says.
Cobots can be programmed, oper- ated, and maintained by existing employees, regardless of the team’s previous robotics experience.
FOOD PRODUCTION ACCELERATED
As far as the agriculture industry is concerned, UR believes Australian farmers need all the help they can
ABOVE: Harvey is a type of robotic harvester developed by QUT and Universal Robots.
PHOTO COURTESY AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR ROBOTIC VISION/QUT