HOW PLUNKETT MADE COBOTS WORK MORE FLEXIBLY

Gloucester-based Plunkett Associates, a prototyping, tooling and production services business, uses cobots to product parts quickly for clients.

A cobot, or collaborative robot, is designed to repeat a process over and over, alongside human beings. They are already widely used in the manufacturing sector.

As an SME, the ability to work 24-hour round-the-clock shifts without having to take on additional manpower helps Plunkett produce parts cost-effectively and quickly. However its cobots are needed across a variety of machines and tasks, so the business developed a way to give its cobot access to one of its Fanuc CNC machines to remove turned parts, replace with new and run through the night.

Plunkett manufactured a table with numerous options to give the cobot easier access to the machine. It needed to have complete stability as any movement would throw off the pick-up and drop-off of parts and it needed to be transportable so could not be fixed to the floor.

Plunkett added a parts platform to hold the blanks for the cobot to pick up, and a chute for the finished parts.

Gloucester robotics company speeds up wine company delivery

While our bars and restaurants were forced to close during the pandemic, an increase in online demand for wine and spirits meant the ageing plant at wine retailer Laithwaites’ Gloucester facility was no longer enough.

So it commissioned Gloucester robotics company CKF to design a new case feed and palletising system.

The company designed a fully automated layer palletising system with a multi-lane accumulation feed system mounted on a new mezzanine floor.

The new system enabled Laithwaites to handle a 50 per cent increase in demand and improve productivity from 65 per cent to 98 per cent.

According to the World Bank, more than 3.5 million tons of solid waste is produced by humans every day.

At the Bristol Robotics Institute, one scientist wants to put this poo to good use and is working on the next generation of bio-engineered fuel cells.

Professor Loannis Leropoulos’s microbial fuel cells (MFCs) mimic an animal’s stomach with microbes breaking down food to create adenosine triphosphate (a molecule that carries energy within cells).

The Bristol lab began building MRCs to power its EcoBots (robots that can remain self-sustainable by collecting their energy from environmental material, mostly waste matter).

While MFCs are still in their infancy, the institute wants to commercialise the invention. The lab recently succeeded in enabling its MFC prototypes to power mobile phones, smart watches, and other devices (including the EcoBots).

Bristol Robotics Institute is a collaborative partnership between the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol, and home to more than 450 academics, researchers and industry practitioners.