The robot end effector market is projected to grow from USD 1.9 billion in 2021 to USD 4.4 billion by 2026; it is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.8% from 2021 to 2026. The market has a promising growth potential due to several driving factors including, growing demand of modular end effectors owing to their cost effectiveness associated with redesigning; adoption of collaborative robots in heavy and non-heavy industries due to strong promotion of industry automation principles such as Industry 4.0; and initiatives by governments and public-private companies to mitigate COVID-19 impact.

Due to the fast-changing nature of industries, the demand for collaborative end effectors is increasing. This scenario is observed in the consumer goods industry, specifically packaging, where the shape, size, surface, or weight of the packaging is constantly changing. A collaborative robot or a cobot is a system that is designed to work alongside humans in a shared workspace in contrast to typical industrial robots operating autonomously. It is a relatively new concept that was first drafted and initiated in 1994 and has been pioneered for actual use only in the last decade. The collaborative robot market is expected to witness a high CAGR of 42.8% between 2021 and 2026, with the presence across every major industry from automotive and electrical & electronics industries to pharmaceutical & cosmetics and food & beverage industries. There are about 42 companies developing and marketing this technology in some form or another.

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Opportunity : Growing demand for electric grippers

Pneumatic grippers, which are the most common type of grippers, provide less flexibility and control over grip forces. In the electrical & electronics and pharmaceutical & cosmetics industries, where robots are installed in cleanrooms or any other location with controlled atmospheric conditions, pneumatic systems are avoided due to the risk of air contamination. On the other hand, hydraulic grippers are not used in the food & beverage and pharmaceutical & cosmetics industries due to the risk of oil spillage in case the hydraulic lines break. Electric grippers address many of the shortcomings presented by other grippers. Initial iterations of electric grippers were slow and inefficient and could not match the gripping forces compared to others. Current-generation electric grippers, however, have the speed and strength to match their pneumatic counterparts with additional benefits. They are fully programmable, giving users finer control over speed and gripping force. A single electrical gripper can handle a wide variety of parts. Since they are electric, they also offer positional feedback and can send the status of the operation, such as jaw position, speed, or grip detection, to the control unit. Pneumatic grippers only have 2 states of operation—fully open and fully closed—but the electric counterpart can also have a partially open or closed state that can decrease cycle time during operation if programmed intelligently.

Challenge : Interoperability issues and difficulty in integration of different robotic framework with existing facilities

Interoperability is a very important function in any factory or manufacturing unit. There must exist a 3Dlar framework for both hardware and software to connect and coordinate various end effector systems. The focus is not only on the software side, which is used for programming, diagnosing, and monitoring but also the interchangeability of hardware between the end effector and robot arm. There have been cases in the industry where a client has bought a robot arm and an end effector separately that were not fully compatible with each other, and the setup was a huge challenge from the onset. It is currently common in the industry to switch end effector mid-cycle to accommodate different parts such as vision systems or replacement of the end effector, owing to better performance-cost ratio. It is the role of the integrator, rather than the manufacturer or end user, to decide on the implementation and set up of the end effector. Interoperability issues, therefore, present a big challenge for SMEs due to their unique requirements and lack of personnel to set up a complex automation setup. Companies have now started to implement plug-and-play functionality in many of their robots to minimize interoperability issues at both software and hardware levels.

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