- Cobots are less expensive and intended to be easier to reprogram and integrate into manufacturing.
- For example, Steelcase owns four next-generation robots based on a platform called Baxter, made by Rethink Robotics. Each Baxter robot has two arms and a tablet-like panel for “eyes” that provide cues to help human workers anticipate what the robot will do next.
- While managers tended to see Baxter as part of the overall system of automation, some front-line workers “saw Baxter as a social being or almost a co-worker, and they talked about Baxter as if it were another person,” she says. “They unconsciously attributed human-like characteristics.”
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