Cobots. The word is a union of collaborate and robots, and the increasing popularity of these autonomous machines in the manufacturing space is a result of the benefits of that union. Like never before, robots are working with—often alongside—human counterparts. And they’re changing the modern industrial workplace. Historically, industrial robotic applications deployed at scale have been geared toward mass production. In these scenarios, the (historically expensive) robots are optimized for a specific task that can be carried out independently.