A collaborative robot, or cobot, is an industrial robot built to operate in the same workspace as people under controlled safety conditions. Unlike fully caged robotic arms, cobots rely on force limits, speed monitoring, sensors, safety-rated stops, and careful task design to reduce the risk of injury.
In cyber security, cobots matter because their behavior is driven by software, calibration data, control logic, and networked systems. If an attacker changes a motion program, disables a safety zone, spoofs sensor input, or alters a vision model, the robot may move in unsafe ways, stop production, or collide with a person or machine. Defenders treat cobot cells as safety-critical cyber-physical systems: segment the network, restrict access to controllers, verify signed updates, monitor configuration changes, and test recovery after faults. A cobot is not “safe by default”; its safety depends on both engineering and secure operation.