You often hear about self-driving cars and their levels of autonomy. When can drivers completely remove their hands from the steering wheel? This also applies to robots. How can robots become fully autonomous?

What are autonomous robots?

Let’s look at the levels of freedom for self-driving cars and draw parallels with the levels of automation in robotic welding.

Level 0: No automation
Just like with self-driving cars at Level 0, everything needs to be done manually. You have a part that must be perfectly pre-assembled without any deviations. Otherwise, robots won’t be able to complete the task. You need to place this part in a precisely defined position, and deviations here are also unacceptable. A highly skilled programmer uses a teach pendant to program every trajectory of the robot’s path.

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