Industrial Automation Magazine India

Flexibility and the ease of use have become strategic necessities

Published on : Monday 05-06-2023

Subrata Karmakar, President, Robotics and Discrete Automation, ABB India Limited

What is the present status of sector wise robots penetration in India? What are the segments that are witnessing increased demand?
According to the latest International Federation of Robotics (IFR) report the sale of industrial robots in India has reached a new record of 4,945 units installed in 2021. This marks a 54 per cent increase as compared to the year before (3,215 in 2020). This makes India rank tenth highest worldwide in terms of annual robot installations, along with the robot density per human rapidly increasing.
 
With a 31 per cent share, the automotive industry continues to be the largest customer for the robotics industry within India, doubling their installations to over 1,500 units in 2021. In general, the highest share is held by the metal industry with 308 units followed by the rubber and plastics industry with 246 units and thirdly the electrical/electronics industry with 215 units. 
 
The manufacturing sector also benefits from government initiatives which improve competitiveness and attractiveness for investors. For example, the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, which subsidises companies increasing production capacity in India within robotics customer industries such as automotive, metal, food processing and pharmaceuticals. With a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of over 3 trillion USD, India is now the world's fifth largest economy. This makes the industrial sector one of the essential components contributing to the GDP. Therefore, it is important to maintain an increase in the sustainable growth of India's manufacturing output.
 
Traditionally the automotive industry has been the main user of industrial robots. How will the electrification of mobility impact this dominance?
The automotive industry has been a major growth driver for the Indian economy, by contributing 49% to the manufacturing GDP and 7.5% of India's total GDP.  Becoming the world's fifth-largest automotive manufacturer, India produces close to 5 million vehicles. Within this, the projection for EV penetration is estimated to be about 5 per cent of the market by 2025.
 
The most significant changes within automotive manufacturing in the past few decades are taking place as OEMs make the transition from Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) to e-mobility. Due to this, new manufacturing processes are needed for both converting old tasks like power train assembly and for including new tasks like battery assembly. Electric Vehicles (EVs) are a strong growing trend, but it is not as clear when exactly they will reach a tipping point and dominate the automotive market.
 
The key challenge in transitioning to EV manufacturing is being able to efficiently manage the transition from ICE to plug-in hybrids (PHEV) to full battery EVs (BEV). To flexibly accommodate a wide variety of options until clear market preferences emerge, e.g., the multiple battery configurations which are available even for the same model car. The scalability to ramp up to larger volumes at an uncertain future tipping point; and adjusting to the new joining methods and automation processes needed for new materials and components, e.g., battery thermal insulation, high tech carbon fibre, increased IT and sensor integration, etc.
 
This is where ABB can help as ABB is uniquely positioned to support EV manufacturing through the combination of its deep domain expertise in automotive, our strong solutions and systems approach and our expertise in integrating collaborative automation and digital. ABB provides various relevant solutions for the industry such as dispensing cells for battery thermal insulation, robot integrated inspection automation cells, SafeMove to enable flexible islands of automation and ABB Ability™ Connected Services to avoid costly downtime.
 
The Covid pandemic struck a blow for digital transformation. Has this led to increased demand for robotic automation?
Robotic Process Automation can become a catalyst to achieve successful digital transformation by the automation of mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. This frees up human resources from spending time on frustrating manual tasks and helps them to instead focus on the more critical areas of business.
 
The pandemic had led to an acceleration of global mega trends – from labour shortages to consumer demand for personalised products all with the growing pressure to also operate sustainably. Hence, businesses are seeking to adapt their processes to overcome these challenges.
 
The key to navigating these trends is flexibility, which can be achieved through intelligent automation. By making use of robotics and automation solutions, such as ABB's, customers can gain flexibility, agility and adaptability in their operations. While automation has always been about increasing productivity and quality, in today's world flexibility and the ease of use have become strategic necessities. The equation is simple: those who cannot adapt – whether in production, logistics or distribution – simply will not survive.
 
How is the entry of cobots and AMRs/AGVs changing the overall scenario of robotic automation in the manufacturing industry?
Industries have been rapidly moving towards what can be called 'the future of manufacturing', as technologies have been re-invented to meet the new requirements of this futuristic model. Automation and data intelligence are leading the way forward for the manufacturing sector, opening the way for the rapid rise of Industry 4.0.
 
This innovative outlook on manufacturing consists of various components such as cloud computing, robotics automation, process automation, and the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and more. As Industry 4.0 transforms industrial operations, companies wish to improve their productivity and increase utilisation by integrating robotics and automation that assist humans.
 
This has led to the rise of collaborative robots, known as 'Cobots'. Hidden behind barriers, industrial robots have traditionally been utilised to speed up tedious, hazardous, and dangerous work. However, through the onset of Industry 4.0, Cobots have been brought to the forefront of many factories working alongside their human counterparts. In addition to other ground-breaking ideas like AI, machine learning, IoT, and blockchain, Cobots have become the most prominent face of what the ongoing industrial revolution signifies. Cobots bring in an added efficiency to factories, warehouses, and logistics systems, across sectors. These interactive machines occupy less space and can work alongside humans, making them ideal for repetitive tasks or those requiring precision for shorter batches, sans the need for intensive reprogramming.
 
Cobots are mobile, compact, easy to programme and have inherent safety to work alongside humans. Small and large businesses can greatly benefit from these aspects in a variety of manufacturing and flow shop processes. Therefore, the role of Cobots in Industry 4.0 is fitting as collaborative automation means greater speed and efficiency, and the future of manufacturing is focused primarily on ensuring consistency of quality, flow, and optimal data collection.
 
While robots are gaining in versatility with integration of machine vision and greater use of AI/ML capabilities, is there a supporting infrastructure in terms of skills and system integrators?
There already are robot data and analysis methods available today that increase the efficiency of a robot system, guarantee higher reliability and enable predictive maintenance. In addition, processes can be optimised through real-time data analysis. For example, ABB's Paint Atomizer uses machine learning to optimise performance/quality based on data with no human intervention.
 
Machine learning today allows the system to remember challenges and continuously improves item recognition and identification of optimal picking vectors, e.g., like a human being who learns by doing, a robot can learn over time and become increasingly flexible and effective. This will enhance tasks such as autonomous grasping, with a combination of vision systems and machine learning algorithms that help a robot understand the size and shape of the object and the correct gripper position and pressure to grasp it.
 
Through machine learning and AI we see opportunities to further develop human-robot collaboration and to make robots more autonomous, within set parameters. The robot should be self-learning or self-optimising in the long term. It's not about copying human abilities. We want to enable robots to work in unstructured environments. For this it is important that the robots recognise certain patterns, for example labels on bottles, and enable them to correct errors independently.
 
ABB believes that the combination of robots and other machines with more computing power (either locally or cloud-based), advanced vision systems and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning will bring many benefits, including greater efficiency through self-optimising performance; increased reliability through predictive maintenance monitoring; improved processes via real-time data analysis for improving quality as well as making systems easier to use, as a robot with AI could look at its production tasks for the day and automatically download a program needed to do a new task, without manual intervention.

(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)