The Hanover Trade Fair kicked off on 30 May. Also in attendance: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Together with the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, he visited the world's first pneumatic cobot at the stand of the Swabian automation specialist Festo.
The Festo-CEO Oliver D. Jung showed Olaf Scholz and António Costa how sensitively human-robot collaboration works with flexible pneumatics. The Federal Chancellor was able to see for himself the almost „human-collegial“ cooperation with the world's first pneumatic cobot, which stops safely and softly within milliseconds in the event of a collision with a human.
The Festo Cobot owes many of its advantages, such as its sensitivity or its weight, to the benefits of pneumatics: The direct drives in the joints are more cost-effective and particularly lightweight because, unlike electric solutions, there is no need for heavy gearboxes and expensive force/torque sensors.
Source: Festo
