Smart hardware integration with advanced robot programming technologies for efficient reconfiguration of robot workcells

Timotej Gašpar, Miha Deniša, Primož Radanovič, Barry Ridge, T. Rajeeth Savarimuthu, Aljaž Kramberger, Marc Priggemeyer, Jürgen Roßmann, Florentin Wörgötter, Tatyana Ivanovska, Shahab Parizi, Žiga Gosar (+2 others)
2020 Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing  
A B S T R A C T The manufacturing industry is seeing an increase in demand for more custom-made, low-volume production. This type of production is rarely automated and is to a large extent still performed manually. To keep up with the competition and market demands, manufacturers will have to undertake the effort to automate such manufacturing processes. However, automating low-volume production is no small feat as the solution should be adaptable and future proof to unexpected changes in
more » ... ers' demands. In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable robot workcell aimed at automating low-volume production. The developed workcell can adapt to the changes in manufacturing processes by employing a number of passive, reconfigurable hardware elements, supported by the ROS-based, modular control software. To further facilitate and expedite the setup process, we integrated intuitive, user-friendly robot programming methods with the available hardware. The system was evaluated by implementing five production processes from different manufacturing industries. • A software backbone based on ROS, which provides modularity of
doi:10.1016/j.rcim.2020.101979 fatcat:msgkxb4zl5ckrcu6mnvdgqrjuy