Fanuc collaborative robot / YouTube screenshot
Canada’s Hamilton Mohawk College introduced six industrial robots into its robotics lab, becoming the first Canadian school to host robots in a classroom without protective barriers.
The $3 million robotics lab is equipped with robots costing $25,000 apiece and more from Japanese company Fanuc. It allows students to practice working with the collaborative machines.
“They can be used side-by-side with people so they’re actually the type that are designed that if they bump into you, they stop,” mechanical engineering professor Emily Lord said in a CHCH News video. “And they’re the most recent type of technology the Fanuc has put out to date.”
More than 300 students from Mohawk College and McMaster University will train on the robots each year, giving them practice in programming, troubleshooting and general maintenance of machines used in industry factories or warehouses, such as the automotive and food industries.
“We learn how they work, how they function, and then we learn how to program them,” fourth-year student Warren Van Sydenborgh said in the video. He explained that these new robots are a significant improvement on the old robotics students trained with, which were “plasticky,” jerky and had problems with their sensors.
The school built the lab after receiving $20 million from the federal government.
In July, the Clovis, Calif. high school the Center for Advanced Research and Technology introduced the Fanuc 2000id robotic arm education system to prepare students for working in the manufacturing industry.
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