X-act aims to increase the infiltration of intelligent and cooperative robotic systems in European, "robot resistant" production facilities.
The penetration of such systems has poorly advanced due to
- the lack of user friendly programming in real industrial environments,
- the complexity in managing robot to robot and human to robot cooperation
- the combined need for production and robotics experts for achieving dexterous operations
- the high safety requirements for human-robot interaction.
X-act proposes the enhancement of dual arm robots for cooperative use with human operators, by means of:
- Dual arm robots enhancement modules involving sensors, visual servoing and flexible tools to enable dexterous operation
- Intelligent motion planning algorithms for synchronizing the motion of the dual arms combined with the enablement of the execution of bimanual operations
- Dual arm robot instructions libraries to simplify programming, allowing the robot program to be incrementally and automatically created
- Simulation modules capable of representing realistically the behaviour of the dual arm robot
- Sensor guided programming involving voice recognition, visual programming, force sensing
- Highly intuitive interfaces for human-robot cooperation during assembly by means of control algorithms to regulate the manipulation of the parts
- Fenceless human robot supervision system to adjust the speed of the robots upon the detection of humans and automatically re-plan robot trajectory
The project will be based on industrial applications, bringing dual arm robots to a maturity level that allows the introduction in industry, not as experimental equipment but as well proven and reliable production technologies.
A demonstration in automotive will involve the dexterous assembly of flexible parts by dual arm robots in cooperation with humans. A second demonstration will focus on rework of electrical appliances to disassemble, rework and reassemble electrical devices.
