Glossary · Business
Cobot
Also known as: collaborative robot
In brief
A cobot is a robot designed to work safely alongside humans without a fence. Most cobots are arm-only (Universal Robots, Franka Emika); humanoid robots are an extension of the cobot paradigm to bipedal full-body platforms.
The cobot category emerged in the 2010s as factories looked for automation that fit human-scale workspaces and tasks. Compliance, force limiting, intrinsic safety — the engineering primitives that make cobots possible are the same primitives modern humanoids depend on, scaled up to a full-body platform.
When a procurement decision is between "cobot arm" and "humanoid", the deciding factors are usually mobility (does the task require moving between stations) and dexterity (does the task need bimanual coordination). For stationary single-station tasks, a cobot arm is usually cheaper and more reliable.
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Glossary entries are upstream. The catalog is where the implementations live.