When it comes to industrial robots we often focus on lightning fast line workers like the flexpicker, or heavy lifters like Kiva, or just cool looking podiums with arms like the Motoman SDA10. There’s a whole realm of bots, however, that are designed just for the small manufacturer and fit on desktops. Soldering circuits, laying down adhesive, or just etching designs, these robots are the unsung heroes of the industrial world. Check out the videos below.

Why are the little desktop droids so important? They bridge a gap between large scale manufacturers and individual robot enthusiasts. Much less expensive than a warehouse sized system, small scale industrial bots have to be versatile enough to fit a wide variety of situations. Perhaps that’s why so many of the robots in this scale are dispensers. Keeping much the same hardware, but changing the programming and supplied materials allows one series of robots to perform a huge variety of tasks. Even desktop 3D printers like Makerbot, which straddle the divide between manufacturing and hobbying, are basically just cooler kinds of dispensers.

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