iREX2022 Report 1: Various new cobots unveiled

March 18, 2022

International Robot Exhibition 2022 (iREX2022) was held at Tokyo Big Sight in Koto-ku, Tokyo, for four days from March 9 to 12, 2022.

A total of 615 companies and organizations exhibited at iREX2022 in 3227 booths. The scale of the event was the largest ever held. However, due to the impact of the COVID-19, the number of visitors over the four days was only 62,400, less than half the number of visitors to the previous exhibition.

iREX is one of the world’s largest robot exhibitions, and the exhibitors, robot manufacturers and system integrators, all presented their latest products and cutting-edge automation technologies.

FANUC’s white cobots “CRX series”. FANUC aims to triple its current production scale by the end of 2022.

Collaborative robots (Cobot) were especially prominent at iREX2022. FANUC has significantly expanded the lineup of its white cobots “CRX series”. The three new models are “CRX-5iA” (5 kg payload), “CRX-20iA/L” (20 kg payload), and “CRX-25iA” (25 kg payload). “Our CRX series lineup is now completed. We will expand the production scale of the CRX series to three times the current level by the end of the year,” said Kenji Yamaguchi, President and CEO of FANUC.

Yamaha Motor’s 7-axis cobots. Yamaha showed off the realization of flexible production lines.

Yamaha Motor exhibited the 7-axis cobot, which is being jointly developed with Tokyo Robotics, a start-up company from Waseda University, as one of its main attractions. With an arm length of 1,300 mm, this cobot can operate freely even in tight spaces, and all seven axes are equipped with torque sensors for safety and flexible force control. Yamaha Motor exhibited a demonstration of using it to feed workpieces to a machine tool.

YASKAWA Electric presented its cutting-edge technology in a big way. The most notable product is the new “MOTOMAN NEXT Series (tentative)” of autonomous robots, the main feature of which is that “MOTOMAN NEXT” does not require any teaching work. The company plans to launch “MOTOMAN NEXT” within the next year.