Rick Vanden Boom Discusses Collaborative vs. Fenceless Traditional Robots with Control Engineering Magazine

AMT’s Vice President–Systems Rick Vanden Boom was featured in a recent Control Engineering magazine article entitled “Fenceless Safety Methods Embrace Human-Robot Interaction.” 

“We have a lot of people coming to us saying they want a collaborative robot. But as we talk through their applications, what they are really after is a fenceless robot,” said Rick Vanden Boom, vice president–systems at Applied Manufacturing Technologies (AMT).

In the article, Vanden Boom discussed a recent project at an automotive powertrain manufacturing facility. AMT engineers designed and installed a system with the first collaborative robot ever deployed at this plant. The foam-clad FANUC robot has a 35 kg payload and custom-designed end-of-arm tooling (EOAT) to install four spark plugs at a time.