The market for collaborative robots (cobots) is rapidly rising around the world. Cobots form an
important element of new paradigms of Industry 4.0 and Smart and Additive Manufacturing. This
article places collaborative robots in the trending framework of Industry 4.0 and discusses
collaborative robots in relation to new ways of human-machine interaction in the Industry 4.0 era. It
describes the origin, development and status of the market for collaborative robots – providing a
rising field with an overview surprisingly lacking from academic literature. Using the burgeoning
academic literature on cobots as a starting point, the article discusses the frontiers of cobot uptake
along three main dimensions. The first dimension relates to economics and includes the value
proposition of cobots supporting agile manufacturing and mass customization. We place the business
models of cobots within wider changes to the industrial business environment with the emergence of
the Platform Economy and value cocreation in platform ecosystems. The second dimension relates to
social aspects, ie. human-machine interface and collaboration. This include issues such as
organizational health and safety, industrial economics, and trust. The third dimension relate to
possible new technological developments within the field of collaborative robotics.
Together these dimensions represent a state-of-the-art overview of the field of cobots and its
next frontiers. By providing this overview and coupling technology, social interaction with humans
and business model- and market insights related to collaborative robots the article makes unique
contributions to a surprisingly under-studied field.