HORSE Smart integrated Robotics system for SMEs controlled by Internet of Things based on dynamic manufacturing processes

Summary

HORSE aims to bring a leap forward in the manufacturing industry proposing a new flexible model of smart factory involving collaboration of humans, robots, AGV’s (Autonomous Guided Vehicles) and machinery to realize industrial tasks in an efficient manner. HORSE proposes to foster technology deployment towards SMEs by developing a methodological and technical framework for easy adaptation of robotic solutions and by setting up infrastructures and environments that will act as clustering points for selected application areas in manufacturing and for product life cycle management (production and/or maintenance and/or product end of life). The main strategy builds on existing technology and research results in robotics and smart factories and integrates them in a coherent framework. The suitability of the resulting framework is not only driven by but will be validated with end-users - manufacturing companies- in two steps: In the first, the joint iterative development of the framework together with selected end-users will take place (Pilot Experiments). In the second, its suitability and transferability to further applications will be validated with new end users, which are recruited by an Open Call mechanism. The novel approaches of HORSE are the integration of concepts such as (physical) human-robot interaction, intuitive human-machine interfaces, and interaction between different robots and machines into an integrated environment with pre-existing machines and workflows. Safety of the human worker as well as reduction of health risks through physical support by the robotized equipment will contribute to better overall manufacturing processes. In these, pre-defined workflows to be customized are the basis for servitisation, for the entire value chain that allow rapid reconfiguration of the robots based collaborative production processes. HORSE aims to foster advanced manufacturing technology deployment by industries and especially SMEs.

More information

Website:	www.horse-project.eu
Duration:	54 months
Start date:	11-01-2015
End date:	30-04-2020
Number of participants:	15
Total budget - EC contribution:	8865871 Euro - 7945601 Euro
Call topic:	ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) - Innovation (FoF.ICT.2015.09.a_Innovation)
Instrument:	Validation experiments - equipment assessments (I4MS)

Location

Characteristics

Challenges - (4) view

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Economic sustainability

Realising reconfigurable, adaptive and evolving factories capable of small scale production

Comment: The whole value chain of SME suppliers and researchers are represented through Open Calls, to define new business models to promote, supply and operate advanced robotics systems, with dynamically controllable and reconfigurable robots, thus servitisation, operation of robotics systems. These business models exploit concepts of Internet of Things (OSGi) and Business Process Management that promise to provide tools and support in customizing and applying advanced robotics within the factories.

High performance production, combining flexibility, productivity, precision and zero-defect while remaining energy-efficient

Comment: Novel approaches from the domain of Business Process Management will be adopted to enhance flexibility whereby robots and humans are actors to be allocated in the tasks of the process maintaining task constrains and safety requirements.

Social sustainability

Increasing human achievements in manufacturing systems

Comment: Immersive and innovative augmented reality technologies will provide assistance via wearable, state-of-the-art dual glasses or Head Mounted Displays (HMD) for the worker, providing augmented reality presentation of the status of his condition and alerts, as well as guidelines for the task at hand where necessary

Safe and attractive workplaces

Comment: HORSE has a multi-layered safety approach incorporating: a) Robot level safety (Fault detection, certified to work without fences), b) System level safety (portable devices for interactive inspection of the shop floor, augmented reality presentation of condition and alerts to the worker), c) Situation awareness software for manufacturing tasks (intention estimation, safety level monitoring)

Technologies and enablers - (5) view

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Mechatronics for advanced manufacturing systems

Control technologies

Comment: HORSE incorporates the design and development of an innovative hybrid position/force control for intrinsically safe flexible robots.

Cognition-based intelligent features within machinery and robots

Advanced machine interaction with humans

Comment: HORSE encompasses multi-modal supervision and control modes for a variety of existing and novel robotic co-workers: cooperative robots (cobots) and “third hand” robots for diverse manufacturing applications, and also demonstration based robot programming techniques for an intuitive programming of robots tasks by non-robotics experts.

Condition and performance monitoring

Comment: HORSE will develop an integrated, process-oriented management model for the high-level control of the production line process with online, automatic allocation of resources (robots, human workers, interaction components, etc.) and rapid and straightforward dynamic re-allocation as necessary considering: the real-time monitoring of the production chain process; the actual worker safety and condition in the execution of the process; the robot positions within the autonomous mobile platforms; the required collaboration between human workers and robots and the available interaction modalities; the automated management of exceptions, occurring as effect of safety breaches, material or agent unavailability, delays in previous steps, e.g. triggered by quality checks, etc.

Information and communication technologies

IoT - ICT solutions for factory floor and physical world inclusion

Comment: HORSE adopts the IoT paradigm and OSGI middleware enabling and facilitating remote control and monitoring of the production line and the available resources and ease installation. For that, the robot controllers, sensors and human-robot- interfaces will be coherently and seamlessly integrated as controllable and active agents in the production. Feedback from agents and sensors will be collected, analysed and used for process control decisions involving the dynamic deployment of cobotic, robotic, and human agents. Thus the constituted advanced closed loop production process control system integrates the high-level, state-of-the-art production process control and the low-level sensor measurements and high-tech robot and cobot solutions and cobot actuation control.

Digital mapping framework - (22) view

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Business model, added value and process focus of digital platform deployment

Business ecosystem

Comment: HORSE includes 4 Competence Centres, in France, Germany, Netherlands and Slovenia

Added Value from user perspective

Optimisation - KPI perspective

Product quality

Quality assurance

Comment: HORSE includes an automated quality inspection system which visually inspects assembled products (wiper systems) for errors before packaging

Process perspective

Engineering

Factory Automation

Technology

Data communication and interoperability

Application level interoperability

Modular Design and Deployment Approaches

Comment: HORSE is an open platform where heterogeneous robots and other automation equipment, as well as new software modules can be integrated via OSGi and managed.

Architecture

Comment: HORSE Framework does not only include a technology platform but also a reference architecture, which was furthermore made public.

Performance characteristics

Safety

Comment: HORSE improves the safety of the robots collaborating with humans in shared workspace, by an enhanced situation awareness and motion replanning of the robots.

Scalability

Comment: HORSE platform is designed as modular and scalable. New technologies and components can be integrated and take advantage of the capabilities that the HORSE platform provides.

Human aspects

Human-machine interaction

Comment: HORSE includes human-machine interaction with Interfaces targeted to be easy-to-use by unskilled workers and learning by demonstration capabilities, to be able to program a robot without the need for robotics expertise. HORSE also includes Augmenter Reality applications, with intuitive instructions and alerts for various manufacturing tasks.

Safety-health

Comment: Safety of robots sharing workspace with human workers, as well as assigned tasks with a health-risk to robots, and to human workers easier tasks, is one of the top opbjectives for HORSE

Manufacturing system levels and life-cycle stages

Manufacturing system levels