Mr. Milsch, home office or office, where are you currently working from?
I am also currently working from home, from where I coordinate with my team and our customers in many virtual meetings. If necessary and desired, I also sometimes travel to the office or to customers - of course, taking into account the current regulations and with disinfectant in my luggage.

How does collaboration with employees, partners and customers work over distance?
In principle, direct, personal communication with people on site always offers the highest quality of conversation in my eyes. However, I have the feeling that people get more used to it and communicate more authentically the longer and more frequently they use virtual channels. So the value of this type of communication is constantly increasing. The closer the tool used comes to face-to-face communication, the better the results in my opinion. That's why I prefer video conferencing to phone calls and emails.

Although the virtual exchange with our customers works very well, we often encounter the desire to experience our application solutions live. No matter how well we present our products virtually: Our customers ultimately want to touch, operate and test them themselves. That's why we have decided to significantly increase our range of free loaners so that customers can see the benefits for themselves. This is very important to us, because ultimately it's about a solution that works hand in hand with people.

Are there perhaps also learning effects from this work during the crisis? Also for your own products and networking?
Definitely. We are noticing that SMEs from the manufacturing industry in particular are increasingly rethinking their approach. They are realizing the great benefits associated with automation through collaborative robotics. Such solutions are particularly attractive if they are easy and intuitive to use, as is the case with OnRobot. A high degree of flexibility also makes such tools desirable for SMEs, as they enable users to use one and the same cobot for different tasks. In addition, our solutions score points with extremely short set-up times, which saves users a lot of time. Thanks to these features, our tools enable companies to produce profitably in even smaller batch sizes with greater product variance. An ROI of three to twelve months makes the investment decision very easy.

You recently introduced the three-finger gripper. What makes it stand out? What makes it different?
I'm glad you mentioned the 3FG15 - it's the first three-finger gripper we've brought onto the market. And it has a lot to offer: Thanks to its design, it automatically grips cylindrical workpieces in a centered and particularly stable manner. This makes it ideal for feeding machines, especially CNC machines - we designed it specifically for this purpose. With a gripping force of up to 240 newtons and a clamping width of up to 150 millimetres, it can easily lift up to 15 kilograms. The range of workpieces that users can handle with it is therefore really wide. This is particularly useful for the aforementioned CNC loading, as users can now use a single gripper to handle a wide variety of workpieces. In view of its high load capacity, it is also very space-saving and can be easily integrated into existing production environments. This is particularly important when collaborating directly with people, as they usually also have to reach the machine - bulky safety fences would only get in the way.

With its flexible silicone attachments, the Soft Gripper can also be used in the food industry. © OnRobot

You have also launched a soft gripper on the market. What are the benefits for users?
With the Soft Gripper, we are entering new market segments, as users can now also use this tool to handle food automatically, for example. The gripper is approved for this purpose in accordance with European Regulation 1935/2004. Three interchangeable silicone attachments give it the necessary sensitivity to grip even delicate objects - for example foam kisses, eggs or even light bulbs. This gripper shows that we are constantly taking collaborative automation into new areas of application with our products. We want to enable users to automate activities that would have seemed unthinkable until recently and offer the right solution for every problem with our diverse portfolio of tools.

"Innovations in the field of end effectors are the next challenge for collaborative robotics," says the OnRobot homepage. What requirements must applications meet in order to remain competitive in the growing cobot market?
We are convinced that cobots will become standard inventory in future working environments. They will then have established themselves as commodities - even in smaller manufacturing companies for which conventional industrial robots were previously out of the question due to the associated costs, their size and complex handling, for example. It will then become clear that collaborative automation only creates added value in the form of holistic applications: only the right combination of cobot, end-of-arm tool and software will enable users to automate processes profitably.

The most fundamental requirement for any application is therefore first and foremost its fit with the task to be automated. And this is where end-of-arm tooling comes into play, which enables the robot arm to perform tasks in the first place. On the one hand, this should be simple to integrate and easy to operate so that users can benefit from it quickly and without time-consuming programming. On the other hand, it should be easy to replace and thus ensure that users can quickly convert their cobots for different tasks. This means that one and the same robot arm can perform different functions, enabling the user to produce more flexibly. This means, for example, that it can also produce small quantities efficiently and react quickly to fluctuations in demand. An application must therefore be flexible, user-friendly and easy to integrate in order to make processes more efficient and really take the pressure off employees.

Collaborative applications provide people with direct assistance and immediate support. Complex safety fences are no longer necessary after a successful risk assessment. © OnRobot

What other technological trends are emerging on the market?
In general, we are seeing a strong trend towards individualized production, and this is pushing for increasingly adaptable automation solutions. Customer requirements are becoming increasingly unique and batch sizes smaller. In order to enable efficient production, applications must be able to be quickly converted for different workpieces and quantities and be individually configurable. We also develop our products in such a way that users can tailor them to their specific requirements as easily as possible. Our compact VGC10, for example, has optional suction cups and modifiable adapter plates that allow the gripper to be optimally adjusted depending on the application and workpiece. And the fingertips of grippers such as our RG2, RG6 or 3FG15 can be individually adapted.

The market is also characterized by advances in vision systems that are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Reaching into the box, i.e. the separation of chaotically arranged objects, is coming ever closer. If this process can be automated on a broad scale, companies will once again benefit massively from the associated increases in efficiency.

What is the competitive situation on the gripper market and what developments do you anticipate?
End-of-arm tooling is becoming increasingly differentiated and the possible applications for collaborative automation are constantly expanding. It is becoming increasingly important for the relevant providers to ensure a high level of compatibility with the cobots of common manufacturers in order to enable simple integration into existing production environments. With this in mind, it is important to reduce complexity - automation should make processes easier for the user, not more difficult. On the one hand, we want to ensure this by making our products extremely user-friendly. On the other hand, we also strive for the greatest possible simplicity in terms of system integration: with our One System Solution, we comprehensively standardized our mechanical and technological interfaces last year. All of our tools are now deeply compatible with the standard manufacturers on the market - for example Kuka, Hanwha Precision Machinery, ABB or Fanuc. In addition, they are now all equipped with a tool changer so that users can change them with a single movement. I expect that, in the long term, those suppliers who can offer their customers simple and user-friendly solutions with a fast ROI will continue to be the most successful. Because only they will enable a very important group to access the benefits of collaborative automation that I mentioned earlier: SMEs.

You have been General Manager for DACH & Benelux at OnRobot for about a year now. What is the most important thing you have achieved in this time? What are your plans for the future?
A year already? Time at OnRobot goes by really quickly due to the rapid growth and the variety of tasks. I am very pleased that we have been able to support our customers and partners in the DACH/Benelux region with a team of nine highly qualified and extremely motivated employees since the beginning of this year. Our figures for 2019 show that our teamwork is leading to success. Together with my team, I naturally want to maintain this pace in the coming years. We will continue to expand the number of our partners across all robot brands and significantly expand our portfolio by the end of 2020. By then, we will cover around 90 percent of all current automation tasks and will be able to justifiably promise users: "No matter which robot, which industry and which application, you will find the right product at OnRobot." as