Toshiba Machine has announced the launch of two new collaborative robots at the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) — the world’s leading robot show, held at the Tokyo Big Sight, Japan on Wednesday 18 to Sunday 22 December 2019. Expanding on the company’s extensive range of industrial robots, the announcement was supported by the company’s official robot distributor^[1] for EMEA and America, TM Robotics.

Toshiba Machine has been an established producer of high-quality industrial robots for over two decades. The newly announced collaborative robots, encompassing a humanoid and SCARA version, are the first machines of their kind from the Japanese manufacturer. Toshiba Machine has previously prioritised the manufacture of industrial robot models such as 6-axis, SCARA and Cartesian.

At IREX 2019, Toshiba Machine unveiled live demonstrations of the new collaborative robots — or cobots — at booth S2-02, South Hall. Displays of the cobots will be accessible for the duration of the exhibition and both models will be available to order from 2020.

Toshiba Machine’s humanoid cobot was demonstrated at IREX in a live parts assembly demonstration. Boasting a 6kg maximum payload for each arm or 10kg when used in combination, the humanoid cobot has been developed to meet demand for human-machine collaboration in parts assembly and inspection processes.  

The SCARA model, which is also collaborative, expands on Toshiba Machine’s established expertise in manufacturing traditional SCARA robots. At IREX, the SCARA display demonstrated how a cobot can be used in delicate electronics handling and packaging applications — a task usually limited to highly accurate industrial machines. Also featuring two arms, the SCARA robot^[2] is suited to fast-paced handling applications.

As collaborative robots, both models will be deployable alongside human workers, allowing manufacturers to benefit from a combination of automated and manual processes. The cobots will be available with brand new, state-of-the-art robotic vision systems.