MERGING Manipulation Enhancement through Robotic Guidance and Intelligent Novel Grippers

Summary

MERGING will deliver a turnkey robotic solution to automate handling of flexible and fragile objects.

Our ambition is to provide manufacturers with an end-to-end solution to automate the handling of soft objects. The solution will consist of a multi-finger gripper equipped with an electro-adhesive skin that conforms to the objects to handle even delicate fabrics or components without any damage. Electro-adhesion increases the direct gripping forces and thus allows greatly reduced clamping forces. Our solution includes perception and supervision functions to adapt the system's behaviour in real time to the execution conditions and for robot system programming accessible to non-specialists.

Our main motivations are to build a versatile, easy-to-use and low-cost system. To demonstrate this and the possibilities of scaling up, we will design our system using proven laboratory technologies (TRL 4), then carry out proof of concept in realistic environments (TRL 6) in three different applications and sectors: fabric handling for lingerie manufacturing, technical fiber handling for composite bus panel manufacturing, plastic bag handling for the food industry.

MERGING is a three and a half year project involving the entire value chain of soft object gripping automation. The CEA leads the project and provides the robotic technologies in collaboration with EPFL (electrical adhesion), AIMEN (perception), LMS (supervision), and SHADOW (capture) and IPC (materials). CEA, EPFL, AIMEN and LMS will respectively use AI technologies for robotic demonstration programming, electro-adhesive skin control, perception and control of the complete system. SELMARK, VDL and THIMONNIER introduce cases of use of fabric, composite and polymer handling respectively. CASP and ACTEMIUM are respectively responsible for the software and hardware integration and the exploitation of the results. SHADOW will release the pliers with electro-adhesive skin after the end of the project.

Results, demos, etc. Show all and search (50)

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Demonstrators, pilots, prototypes

Result items:

Industrial pilot case 1: manipulation for lingerie manufacturing

Industrial pilot case 2: manipulation for food packaging

Industrial pilot case 3: manipulation for composite manufacturing

Result items:

Merging presentation at the EFFRA Manufacturing Partnership Day - 26 September 2023

Merging project and industrial pilot cases

Perception functionalities demonstration

Exploitable result(s)

Result items:

Deformable Object Handling Controller

Deformable material modeling and model-based robot control

Fragile objects comanipulation

Glove Comanipulation

Human tracking using computer vision

Modelling and model based co-manipulation

Multi tool end effector

New intelligent robotic system for enhanced material handling through cost efficient robotized solutions

Shielded soft force sensors

Teaching by demonstration

Result items:

Cyber-physical systems in non-rigid assemblies: A methodology for the calibration of deformable object reconstruction models

Merging Tutorials

Merging presentation at the EFFRA Manufacturing Partnership Day - 26 September 2023

Model-Based Robot Control for Human-Robot Flexible Material Co-Manipulation

On deformable object handling: Model-based motion planning for human-robot co-manipulation

On deformable object handling: multi-tool end-effector for robotized manipulation and layup of fabrics and composites

More information & hyperlinks

Web resources:	https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/869963 http://www.merging-project.eu/ https://www.youtube.com/@MERGING-Project - You Tube channel
Start date:	01-11-2019
End date:	31-10-2023
Total budget - Public funding:	7 926 712,00 Euro - 7 926 712,00 Euro
Twitter:	@mergingproject

Cordis data

Original description

MERGING will deliver a turnkey robotic solution to automate handling of flexible and fragile objects.
Our ambition is to provide manufacturers with an end-to-end solution to automate the handling of soft objects. The solution will consist of a fingered gripper equipped with an electro-adhesive skin that conforms to the objects to handle, even delicate fabrics or components, without any damage. Electro-adhesion increases the direct gripping forces and thus allows greatly reduced clamping forces. Our solution includes perception and supervision functions to adapt the system's behaviour in real time to the execution conditions and for robot system programming accessible to non-specialists.
Our main motivations are to build a versatile, easy-to-use and low-cost system. To demonstrate this and the possibilities of scaling up, we will design our system using proven laboratory technologies (TRL 4), then carry out proof of concept in realistic environments (TRL 6) in three different applications and sectors: fabric handling for lingerie manufacturing, technical fiber handling for composite bus panel manufacturing, plastic bag handling for the food industry.
MERGING is a four-year project involving the entire value chain of soft object gripping automation.
The CEA leads the project and provides the robotic technologies in collaboration with EPFL (electrical adhesion), AIMEN (perception), LMS (supervision), and SHADOW then OMNIGRASP (capture) and IPC (materials). CEA, EPFL, AIMEN and LMS will respectively use AI technologies for robotic demonstration programming, electro-adhesive skin control, perception and control of the complete system. SELMARK, VDL and THIMONNIER introduce cases of use of fabric, composite and polymer handling respectively. CASP and OPTEAMUM are respectively responsible for the software and hardware integration and the exploitation of the results. OMNIGRASP will release the pliers with electro-adhesive skin after the end of the project.