Collaborative robots, or cobots, have been working with humans on the factory floor for years, but when it comes to the large-scale industrial robots that can lift and move massive pieces of manufacturing, the danger to human workers is so great that the robots are bolted down to the factory floor behind fences so a human never comes near them. That is starting to change as robotics becomes more widespread across industries. Today there are, on average, 84 robots for every 10,000 workers in the U.S., according to the International Federation of Robotics. This places the U.S. second to Europe, at 99 units, and ahead of Asia, which to date averages 63 units (though the most roboticized country in the world is South Korea). While these next-generation robots are revolutionizing companies and expanding their bottom line, there is one very real caveat: Their increasing interactivity and mobility opens up the possibility of injury to human co-workers. "[Large-scale industrial] robots in factories today are literally kept in cages," says Clara Vu, co-founder and vice president of engineering at Veo Robotics, a start-up developing sensor technology to allow industrial robots to work safely side-by-side with humans. Vu, who has been building robots for more than 20 years, got her start working as an intern for iRobot when they were just a tiny start-up in the attic of a shopping mall. Vu wrote the programming language for iRobot's most well-known product, the Roomba, an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner that debuted in 2002.

Clara Vu, a former Roomba engineer who co-founded Veo Robotics, developer of cobots that can safely work with humans without being bolted to factory floors. Veo Robotics

Vu says the cages are not to keep the robots in but to keep the humans out. "The robots are bolted to the floor. They're not going anywhere. But ... the robot is not aware of the human, and it can be thousands of pounds, and it's moving really fast and people can get hurt." Veo Robotics plans to change that. On Monday the Massachusetts-based company rolled out its new product, called Veo FreeMove, which gives robots spatial awareness of every object and obstacle in their reach. Its monitoring system signals a robot to slow or stop if an unrecognized, human-size object is closer to the robot than an acceptable protective separation distance, or PSD. When the obstruction passes, the robot will continue as programmed, allowing work to proceed without interruption. The price tag: $30,000. Partnering with four of the world's largest robot manufacturers — Kuka, Fanuc, ABB and Yaskawa — Veo retrofitted 3-D depth sensors and computer vision software into their robots and conducted trials with a number of automotive, household appliance and consumer packaged-goods manufacturers. For now Veo is using Microsoft Xbox Kinect depth cameras but is working on building its own sensors. "The collaborative power and force-limited robots have been very useful for assembly of small things. What we would like to do is extend those advantages to all robots, regardless of the size. Whether it's a robot that can carry a car, or a robot that can carry a car door, or a robot that moves fast and positions things very precisely," says Patrick Sobalvarro, Veo's CEO and co-founder.

What we hear from every factory, every line manager ... is that they can't hire enough production workers. The production labor workforce is aging out, and one of the things we see as an advantage of our system is that physical strength will no longer be required for production workers. Patrick Sobalvarro Veo's CEO and co-founder