DOBOT Nova 2

DOBOT Nova 2 is the smaller of the two arms with which Dobot opened its Nova series in November 2022, and the series was aimed from the start at commerce rather than manufacturing. The design argument is compactness: a 625 mm reach covers a drinks counter or a vending cabinet without the arm needing a cell around it, and a 2 kg payload is specified as enough to lift a one-litre beverage container. Dobot advertises throughput in units a cafe owner recognises - about 500 cups of coffee or 300 bowls of noodles in a day - which is an unusual but honest way to describe a machine whose real customers are unattended retail kiosks. The mechanics are conventional six-axis cobot practice executed tightly. The arm weighs 11 kg, repeats to +/-0.05 mm and reaches 1.6 m/s at the tool. J1 and J4 through J6 turn +/-360 degrees, J2 +/-180 and J3 +/-156, with every joint capped at 135 degrees per second. The body is aluminium alloy and ABS, rated IP54, running at 0-50 degrees Celsius and mountable at any angle. Noise is quoted at 65 dB(A) - relevant when the robot stands a metre from a customer. Typical power draw is 100 W, peaking at 250 W, which is low enough for ordinary single-phase premises. The controller is the part that makes the product make sense in a shop. It is a 200 x 120 x 55 mm box weighing 1.3 kg, passively cooled, running on 30-60 V DC - small enough to hide inside a counter rather than standing beside it as a cabinet. It offers eight digital inputs and outputs, two analogue inputs and outputs, two Ethernet ports for TCP/IP and Modbus TCP, two USB ports and an RS485 line for Modbus RTU, plus remote power on and off. The arm's wrist carries its own two digital I/O channels and an RS485 line for grippers and tools. Programming is done from a PC or from Android and iOS apps, which again points at operators who are not automation engineers.

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