Cobot Palletizers

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Collaborative robots, or cobots are designed with advanced sensors and algorithms to detect human presence and movement, reducing the risk of accidents. This allows them to work without traditional safety barriers. They are widely used for automatic palletizing applications.

Cobot palletizers typically have a cobot with a vacuum gripper mounted on a vertical linear guide serving 2 pallet positions. Full pallets can be exchanged by an operator while the cobot is loading the other pallet. Cobots operate at rates of 400 to 500 cartons per hour. In case of double picks the throughput might be increased further.

Advantages

Ease of Use: Many cobots are intuitive to program and operate, requiring less specialized technical knowledge. This reduces training time and makes them accessible to non-engineers.
Flexibility: A cobot palletizing cell can be picked up with a pallet jack and placed at another location. They can be put aside if the floorspace is required otherwise.
Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional industrial robots, cobots are often less expensive to purchase and maintain. Their ability to work alongside humans can also reduce the need for complex and costly safety measures. Cobot palletizing cells are priced in a range of 100 – 150k euro.

Disadvantages

Throughput rate: For container unloading a cobot is typically too slow. The cobot cannot keep up with a skilled operator in the container, introducing a bottleneck.
Initial setup time: Although cobots are easier to deploy than traditional robots, they still require time for setup, calibration, and testing, especially in environments that haven’t used automation before.
Product handling: Cobots often use vacuum grippers to handle the cartons. However, cartons can be deformed, humid, poorly taped, porous or have straps. In those cases a vacuum gripper is not capable of handling the carton, leading to an interruption of the process.
Single SKU: Cobot palletizing cells are generally not equipped with a barcode scanning system and therefore only suited to process a single SKU. Multi SKU unloading introduces the need for an integrated scanning and sorting system, at the cost of flexibility.

Conclusion

Cobots are a good solution when looking for flexible, safe, and cost-effective palletizing solution, but only if the carton quality suffices for vacuum handling. Generally they are less suitable for inbound palletizing.

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