MyCobot Series Review

What is the story behind MyCobot from Elephant Robotics ?

While looking at the existing robotic technologies, Joey Song, a Chinese student, had the idea in 2016 to design cobotics accessible to everyone. Together with Wu, he founded Elephant Robotics with the goal of targeting not only industry-related but also commercial and service-related businesses.

Their first cobotic models in 2018 marked their difference with great lightness and small size. They sought a compact design that could fit anywhere and be comfortable in the hands of any worker. Besides being open-source and cloud-compatible, the robots provided very intuitive controls, whether by hand or voice.

With the Catbot series in 2019., Elephant Robotics wanted to offer its innovation to industry players. With their MyCobot series in 2020, they reinforce their product range by now targeting service, craft, art, and trade-related companies, and even consumers.

With the pro version of MyCobot, they provide a highly collaborative cobot, which can be used in photography studios, as well as in stores and offices.

How does MyCobot Pro work?

After unpacking your MyCobot, you can immediately start to download the MyStudio software. This interface will allow you to calibrate each joint of the cobot arm one by one. You can then access the RoboFlow software to code the desired task.

By turning on the system and creating a new program, you can assign task blocks using the free motion feature. Free motion allows you to move the robot arm from one point to another and save the location. From these points, you can add then timeouts, action loops or more complex logic functions. With even more advanced features, you can also define common path models, such as a particular line, plane, or cube to better capture these types of objects.

After setting up the effector (gripper, pump or pen) at an input or output, users can also define the tool’s actions. With the Quick Mode, they can also define precise angles for the different joints or custom process speed.

For the robot to work, you need also to set up the details of the robot, such as the payload of its gripper or the weight of the objects handled. The interface indicates the occurring errors during the process. It creates an error log that allows debugging.

What are the applications of MyCobot ?

Compact and agile robot, MyCobot can handle more original and creative applications than other cobots:

• Taking pictures
• Painting and drawing
• Commercial activities: beverage service and animation in stores
• Assistance in workshops, laboratories or hospitals.
• Education and research

What to expect from the interaction with MyCobot?

Thanks to its small size and design, MyCobot is quite pleasant to handle. But there are other reasons for its great ergonomics and ease of use.

First, you can easily master the programming interface. Even though, MyCobot supports standard programming languages like Python or UIflow, amateurs can also use RoboFlow intuitive coding software. On it, they can code tasks in block form and turn on the effectors remotely. They can also add more complex functions and thus make the cobot perform more interesting tasks.

MyCobot also provides computer vision features, to grasp objects or colors with more flexibility. But for the moment, only advanced users can master those features through Python API. A add-on product, MyCobot kit, can help discover and learn programming, but is more suited for kids and learners.

To put it simply, MyCobot pro is easy to use for performing rather repetitive and simple tasks in offices, stores and workshops. But you may need more technical skills to make it perform complex tasks. Only developers would be able to make MyCobot perform more interesting applications.

But MyCobot is still a charming cobot for everyone to use and to make businesses discover the world of robotics!