Imagine you've just spent $10,000 on a custom gripper and tooling for a six-axis robot. As engineers teach the robot how and where to pick up a large, heavy casting, the inevitable occurs: The motion profile is slightly off, the arm crashes into the casting, and the gripper is ruined. And though the cost of new tooling is bad enough, what may be worse is the time needed to replace it.
Fortunately, there is a way to protect expensive tooling from damage during accidental collisions. It's called, oddly enough, a crash protection device. Also known as an overload protection device or collision sensor, a crash protection device is installed between the robot arm and the end effector.