Cosmic Robotics robots could speed up installation of physically demanding solar panels

There has come a time when the installation of solar panels has led to an increasing demand for trained installation personnel. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that in the United States, looking forward to the year 2033, we could see a 48% increase in the number of people performing these installations. Even so, if we focus on the tangible, the shortage of personnel may be due to conditions that cannot be changed, such as the location chosen for the creation of solar farms.

One of the biggest challenges is that these solar parks are being built in deserts. This puts a lot of physical strain on the workers given the climatic conditions, which could exhaust them and put them in danger. We must take into account that the installation of the panels is not simple; besides requiring a certain level of knowledge, it also involves an additional physical effort in which the worker must climb a panel several meters high, since they can weigh up to 40 kilograms, which could take several hours a day to do it.

In order to provide a solution to this problem, where labor is scarce because it is an unattractive job, Cosmic Robotics has come to be part of the assistance to the personnel. We are talking about a robotic arm capable of supporting and manipulating great weight, while maintaining its efficiency by sliding on an eight-wheeled vehicle. The way it is built makes the experience very light, as this arm has suction cups that manage to easily manipulate the panels, followed by a process assisted by cameras that detect the environment and a GPS that locates the vehicle within the route to be performed.

On the other hand, if we talk about autonomy, this vehicle drags a trailer with batteries and computer chips. At the end of the day, the charge can be supplied again in a tank, which gives great flexibility. On a day-to-day basis, this makes all the difference, because under the supervision of human personnel, the robot is able to install panels with great precision, even to within a few millimeters.

According to Emerick, the company's co-founder and CEO, these robots should not be seen as something that could take away jobs, but as a workforce amplifier. With this in mind, employees would be able to dedicate their efforts through their intelligence and dexterity, and not so much on their physical form. This way of working together with technology would make the process of installing solar farms faster. In addition, something Emerick adds is that it would be possible to split a crew in two, allowing the installation of solar panels to be doubled during the day.

In terms of efficiency and effectiveness, Cosmic-A1 can perform panel installations between 30-40 seconds with high accuracy. This is an improvement in the way employees work, with regular breaks that are not due to exhaustion. In this perspective, the robot does the heavy lifting, with the caveat that it will be able to keep up the pace throughout the day.

Cosmic Robotics has recently been funded with $4 million through a seed round. The round was led by Giant Ventures, with participation from firms such as HCVC, MaC Ventures and angel investors such as Azeem Azhar, Aarthi Ramamurthy and Nate Williams. According to Emerick, this funding will be used to manufacture robots and make them available for production environments.

Because solar energy is the most important source of energy today, and because it supplies power to data centers, requiring low costs and streamlined implementation, there is a growing demand for electricity supply, which will be used to provide the robots with the necessary autonomy. We can finally state that this is a big step towards the automation of construction sites with respect to solar energy.