Festo: Thoughts on the new Cobot

The articles about the announced cobot found lively interest. Festo presented the world's first pneumatic cobot on Wednesday. The blog is currently recording far above-average page impressions, including from the USA. There - the blog can report bilingually - I have also spread the articles in social media. Time to follow up, moreover, where I find some interesting aspects worth mentioning.

Why was it introduced long before the market launch?

The market launch is planned for 2023. I assume that not the turn of the year is meant, but weeks or months after that. Thus, it can be speculated all the more why the Cobot has already been unveiled now. Possible reasons could be:

• A highlight for the upcoming Hannover Messe was missing. There was certainly a certain pressure to show something more than before in terms of robotics, but I think that will not have been the main reason. Festo also has other innovations.
• disrupting funding rounds from today's robotics manufacturers. I don't think that was the motivation for the presentation. Festo is not Amazon (when brick-and-mortar bookseller Barnes and Noble announced it was going public, Amazon announced one innovation after another to make it harder for its competitor to get in).
• Test customers and partners are being sought. Perhaps one reason, whereby Festo would gain access to everyone with a little work.
• The company's own sales department is to be sensitized in the direction of cobots. This may indeed have been an important consideration for the early announcement. After all, sales are to be handled by the company's own employees. How this will subsequently be implemented remains to be seen. The customer usually needs more than just a cobot. The sales employee therefore needs a deeper understanding of the subject. Product knowledge alone is not enough.

Can pneumatic cobots also handle high payloads?

I am not a technician. The presented Cobot can lift 3 kg and needs air for this. Other models are supposed to have a reach of more than 670 mm with a similar payload. Now my question: Does a pneumatic cobot with e.g. 12 kg payload consume four times more air or does the demand increase? I ask because at some point it should then become noisier. A puffing cobot would not be an image gain. However, I assume that the air consumption will not be disturbingly high.

Is the work data sufficient?

Apart from the pneumatics, the Festo reminds me of the Franka: same payload, similar programming, sensitivity and shorter range. It is known from Franka that its capabilities often cover the lower limit of what is required - or not. Therefore, the question is what the market will provide. After all, thanks to TQ, Franka is doing well in the printed circuit board industry, for example. In addition, the Franka is very inexpensive and the Munich-based company now has months to prepare for the new competitor, e.g. with an industrial upgrade of the current model.

As a reminder, the world's best-selling cobot model by far is the UR 10 from Universal Robots. Payload 12.5 kg, reach 1,300 mm. But not everyone wants to be the world market leader. Festo is probably addressing its segment where its sales are at home. Presumably, the Cobot will become part of the "modular automation system."

Festo as well as Bosch-Rexroth prefer workhorses without "bells and whistles

It is striking that both companies favor quite innovative cobots without special sensors or software equipment. Bosch-Rexroth has acquired a majority stake in Kassow Robots. They are thus targeting existing markets. David Reger, CEO of Neura Robotics, has said that the existing markets offer less because they are already occupied. With his "MAIRA," tasks can be done that were not feasible before. A pneumatic cobot represents an innovation, but does it have additional benefits? Franka or probably the new Swiss "P-Rob Eco" from F&P Robotics (link) are just as easy to program. The price leader will probably remain igus forever. In addition, low-cost Chinese manufacturers are increasingly knocking on European doors. Price & ease of use alone will hardly suffice as a sales argument. The name "Festo" can be a plus.

Festo and Bosch-Rexroth, on the other hand, are counting on strong market growth or good opportunities in cut-throat competition if the market does not grow so strongly after all. (Kassow has a niche USP thanks to its seventh axis.) But clearly, corporations rarely think like Peter Thiel. The Valley investor had said in 2014 "We wanted flying cars, they gave us 140 characters." (At the time, Twitter had only 140 characters.)

Good performance, low distribution

The Cobot was presented very professionally in a "tech talk". The responsible persons were interviewed, it was demonstrated. Actually comparable with the presentation of the ABB cobots. (Link ethält also video to the "MAIRA" - worth seeing.) It seems all the more astonishing that the presentation has not yet been made available to the general public. Maybe this will follow.

Are we networking? LinkedIn
-> To the Cobot group on LinkedIn (Link) .

In my own right/advertisement
The author of this blog is significantly involved in the AI/robotics project Opdra. He advises robotics companies and investors on market analysis and funding/subsidies. More about him can be found here.