Collaborative robots, or cobots, are industrial robots designed to work directly alongside people without a separating safety fence. Sensors, limited forces and speeds, and safety functions ensure that they stop or move away on contact; requirements are set out in standards such as the ISO 10218 series. Cobots handle tasks such as loading machines, screwing or packing, while employees take care of inspection and special cases.
AI in manufacturing covers applications in production and industry, such as predictive maintenance based on sensor data, automated camera-based quality inspection, optimisation of process parameters and production planning, and robots that work alongside people. The aims are fewer breakdowns, less scrap and more stable operations. This requires reliable machine data and the involvement of experts on the shop floor. Example: a system recognises from vibration patterns that a bearing may soon fail.
Embodied AI agents have a physical or simulated body through which they perceive their surroundings via sensors and act on them through movement. Examples include warehouse and household robots, humanoid robots and characters in simulations where robots are trained before real-world use. The challenge lies in combining perception, planning and safe action in an unpredictable world.
Computer vision is a field of AI in which computers interpret images and video. Typical tasks include detecting and locating objects, reading text in images and measuring components. The technology is used, for example, in quality control in manufacturing, in driver assistance systems, in logistics and in medical imaging.
Pose estimation is a computer vision technique that determines the posture of people, or the position and orientation of objects, in images or video. Typically a model detects key points such as shoulders, elbows and knees and joins them into a skeleton. It is used, for example, in fitness apps that check exercises, in workplace ergonomics analysis, in sports analytics and in robotics.
