LOCOBOT Toolkit for building low cost robot co-workers in assembly lines

Summary

LOCOBOT will develop a toolkit for low-cost robots built from a set of plug-and-produce kinematic modules with compliant yet precise actuators and intelligent sensors for man-machine cooperation. The toolkit will provide higher flexibility, adaptiveness and scalability, all of which are required to meet the challenges faced by manufacturing in the 21st century. Key players in the automotive industry, along with the manufacturers of automation modules and components, as well as high-tech SMEs, are supported by a group of high-quality researchers in solving the project’s technical challenges. Production in the automotive industry is faced with the challenge of high numbers of variants. A robot co-worker will substantially enhance efficiency by cooperating with people and greatly reduce the need for heavy lifting. The need to enter the market early, with reasonably priced vehicles, while increasing production, has to be met by new production technologies such as those developed at LOCOBOT. LOCOBOT goes far beyond most available systems as it is safe, low-cost and tailor-made, complying with the end-user’s need to produce greener, more customised and higher-quality products for their industry. Stemming from its increased flexibility and efficiency, the immediate impact (2-5 years) of LOCOBOT will be about €150 million in savings. This will be 10 times as much in the following years, depending on how the production numbers of the e-vehicle evolve. Three major objectives will be addressed: • Development of a modular plug and produce robotic assistant platform in which the robot will consist of a set of lightweight, compliant kinematic modules built on a mobile platform. • Reconfiguration of adaptive control for plug-and-produce components to avoid costly reprogramming and setup procedures for control algorithms and software. Control algorithms need to be adaptive and self-optimising to account for the different kinematic structures, deal with oscillations induced by the mobile platform and achieve precise positioning. • Intelligent sensing and actuating structures, for which the robot will be equipped with a stereo camera system and audio components to obtain and process audiovisual information, so that it can learn to cooperate with human workers.

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Web resources:	http://www.locobot.eu https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/260101
Start date:	01-08-2010
End date:	31-07-2013
Total budget - Public funding:	5 323 426,00 Euro - 3 740 000,00 Euro

Cordis data

Original description

The European automotive industry and their component manufacturers are facing the biggest shift in their history. The transition from combustion engines to electric drives (e-vehicle) requires pro-duction facilities that can initially deal with low and varying production volumes and can quickly be up-scaled to large numbers at need. LOCOBOT provides a solution to this problem by developing a flexible robotic assistant platform to support manual production processes and increase the produc-tivity and precision of such tasks. LOCOBOT does not only include the robot itself but also the en-gineering tools that are required for quickly building the robot, setting up its control structure and defining its tasks. Facing the demographic change, a further goal of LOCOBOT is the improvement of ergonomics in industrial production processes. A group of key players in the automotive industry, in automation components, advanced robots and engineering software will be supported by a group of excellent researchers to solve the technical and scientific challenges in LOCOBOT. The results will be demonstrated by setting up 3 typical and highly relevant use cases in a pilot production line of Audi AG. The automotive industry will benefit from LOCOBOT by having a robot assistant that can be quick-ly reconfigured in terms of its kinematic structure as well as its tasks. This allows them to make manual production processes much more efficient, to quickly up-scale a production process if re-quired and to improve working conditions by reducing the need to lift heavy objects (such as wheel hub drives for the e-vehicle). This will enable the industry to achieve a leading position in the the e-vehicle market and to keep up with the expected customer demand. The immediate impact (2-5 years) of LOCOBOT will be about 150 MEur in savings due to increased flexibility and efficiency, and will be 10 times as much in the following years depending on how the production numbers of the e-vehicle evolve.