Industrial Robots Used In Typical Work Cells And Manufacturing Cells

In modern factories, multiple robots can be connected together to perform a common function such as welding, painting, material handling, and machine loading or assembly. These functions can be modified slightly and a change of program in the robot allows the flexible manufacturing cell to change its job slightly. The robots are connected through a network or to PLCs that are used to pass information between them. The information includes data to indicate when one robot is in an exclusive space that's shared with another robot. It's important that both robot don't enter the same space at the same time, so the robots will lock out other robots from traveling in the space if it's already there. The next sections will present several typical applications where multiple robots work together to complete large jobs.