Industrial Automation Magazine India

TM Robot is the first collaborative robot equipped with a vision system

Published on : Monday 01-11-2021

Scott Huang, Chief Operating Officer, Techman Robot.

Interesting origin of the company from a computer manufacturing parent. What is the rationale of getting into this field?
Quanta Computer’s subsidiary is Quanta storage, which has developed the world’s first thin CD-ROM drive, helping it battle with IC design house MediaTek Inc., at one point, for the title of having the highest stock price on Taiwan’s market.      

Therefore, Quanta Storage had a solid foundation of technology talent and great capability to electromechanical control, and it began to invest in the development of robots – Techman Robot in 2012. After 4 years, Techman Robot was officially established in 2016.

The collaborative robots market has some major global players. What is the USP that differentiates the Techman collaborative robot?
TM Robot is the first collaborative robot equipped with a vision system, which integrates into both the hardware and software perfectly, comparing to the add-on vision for robotics that are more time consuming and costly to implement. In just three years after launching, Techman Robot has become the world’s second-largest collaborative robot brand.

The other difference between Techman Robot products and those of other more traditional robot makers is their user interface, which functions similarly to a smartphone app.

Where users needed more than a month in the past to fully integrate a robotic system, the process has now been reduced to five minutes, saving factories big and small substantial manpower and equipment costs.

How easily does this integrate into the smart factory environment and are there any compatibility issues with accessories, standards and protocols?

Our TM Plug & Play partners provide a variety of peripherals that are available for direct integration with TM Robot. All products are ready to use solutions to be implemented in your factories, along with your products software and hardware to save the time. 

We provide several protocols to communicate with the TM Robot: Profinet, Ethernet ip, TCPIP, RD232, Modbus, etc. We also apply our API called TM Robot API. On the other hand, you can also use ROS to code the TM Robot.

The company has a collaboration with OMRON, which has its own range of robots. How does this arrangement work?
In May of 2018, Techman Robot formed a strategic alliance with OMRON, a world leader in industrial automation, to further the distribution and exposure of our TM series collaborative robots in the global markets. We hope that our partnership with OMRON will open new innovative doors into the future of Industry 4.0.

Techman Robot and OMRON started early discussions in July 2017 and came to an agreement to bring together each company’s strengths. Under the new alliance, OMRON will market and sell TM collaborative robots through its worldwide distribution network under a co-branded logo.

Is Techman present in the Indian market? What is the distribution and service arrangement?

In the Indian market, we sell the robot mainly through distributors. Currently we have 4 distributors in India. Techman partners need to go through technical and after-service training from Techman to obtain the right of agency. We strive to provide all customers with the most professional services.

India has a low base of installed robots with a high potential. How does Techman see this market?
There are many local manufacturers and foreign companies set up production factory in India, there’s no doubt that India is the next big market with high expectations. As the epidemic lockdown measures are further relaxed, India's manufacturing industry is staging a steady recovery. The impact of the epidemic has also made India's manufacturing industry more demanding for automation and industrial upgrading, and it is estimated that India's demand for automation equipment will gradually rise in the future.

Scott Huang, Chief Operating Officer, Techman Robot, has done his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, National Taiwan University. Before joining Techman Robot in 2016 as the COO, he has worked with Quanta Storage Inc., since 1999, first as Manager R&D, later Division Director of R&D, QSI and then as Business Unit GM of Intelligent System Division. Mr Huang had begun his career as a special researcher at the famed ITRI, Taiwan, during 1995-97.

Techman Robot is a leading collaborative robot and vision technologies company, dedicated to improving the world of work for businesses and their people through (robotic) technology applications. TM12, the world’s first intelligent collaborative robot featuring built-in visual recognition from Techman Robot perfectly integrates hands, eyes and brain into one system, which significantly improves the ease of using industrial robots and considerably reduces cost and deployment time. With its powerful built-in vision system, TM12 can see, think and work with and like a human being. Combining the smart vision system and hand-guiding functions, everyone, even those without robotic programing experience, can achieve a visual pick and place task within 5 minutes.