SEAT S.A – Automotive Industrial Scenario - Operator collaborative support on assembling/disassembling car body heavy parts

SEAT, S.A. is the only company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets cars in Spain. A member of the Volkswagen Group, the multinational has its headquarters in Martorell (Barcelona), sells vehicles under the CUPRA and SEAT brands.

The company employs over 15,000 professionals and has three production centres – Barcelona, El Prat de Llobregat and Martorell. The paint shop of the company, located in Martorell, will act as one of the Sharework project industrial scenarios to demonstrate the effectiveness of industrial collaborative robotics to support operators while assembling and disassembling automotive body parts.

Automation of transportation of automotive pieces and operators support during assembly/disassembly processes:

Within Sharework project, the transportation of pieces to the paint shop and within it was redesigned and automatised with the integration of a high payload robot that carries, position and holds the car pieces while the operator carries the assembly and disassembly tasks needed before and after the painting process.

The main challenges solved in Sharework scenario was to ensure a safe human-robot collaboration and integrate numerous sensors in the environment to provide the robot with the necessary knowledge to be able to detect workers and obstacles, as well as to adjust the trajectory accordingly. In this use-case, operators are able to interact with the robot through the Human-Robot interfaces developed in the project, using a tablet to indicate the robot which parts to be mounted and a hand-guiding mechanism that will let them manually guide the robot.

Through the Sharework project, SEAT S.A., a major automotive manufacturer, in collaboration by LMS as technology coach, ensured a successful integration of Sharework modules and technologies into the paint shop. With the Sharework project, a conventional robot was transformed into an intelligent system capable of working efficiently and collaboratively with the employee. This not only improved day-to-day working conditions, but also offered the possibility to develop and train in robotized and digitized environments, improving the employee’s skills and competencies.