Collaborative robots (cobots) are robotic arms that can be manipulated directly by human users to allow the teaching of tasks without having to use complex programming interfaces. Commercially available cobots are based on serial architectures. They use actuators with large reduction ratios and they are therefore not mechanically backdrivable. Force/torque sensors provide the reactions to the forces applied by human users on the robot. As a consequence, such robots cannot match human agility, which makes their use rather unnatural in human-guided tasks. Read more
