Project description
Hybrid, mobile, dual-arm robots for dynamically reconfigurable manufacturing
Production equipment that is incapable of supporting multiple operations in dynamic environments undermines the productivity of serial production models. EU industry faces challenges in relying on low-cost labour due to rapidly rising wages and increasing energy and logistics costs. Standard robots cannot guarantee fully automated manual tasks due to factors such as high product variability, dedicated process equipment and maintenance expenses. The manufacturing sector requires innovative production concepts that emphasise autonomy and collaboration among production resources. The EU-funded THOMAS project will create a dynamically reconfigurable shop floor by employing autonomous, mobile, dual-arm robots capable of perceiving their environment, collaborating with each other and working alongside other production resources and human operators.
Objective
The productivity of the serial production model is compromised by the need to perform changes in the production equipment that cannot support multiple operations in dynamic environments. Low cost labour is no longer an option for EU manufacturers due to the fast rise of wages and the increasing costs of energy and logistics. Manual tasks cannot be fully automated with a good ratio of cost vs robustness using standard robots due to: high product variability, dedicated process equipment and high cost of maintenance by expert users. The answer to this challenge lays in the creation of production concepts that base their operation on the autonomy and collaboration between production resources.
The vision of THOMAS is: “to create a dynamically reconfigurable shopfloor utilizing autonomous, mobile dual arm robots that are able to perceive their environment and through reasoning, cooperate with each other and with other production resources including human operators”.
The objective of THOMAS are to:
- Enable mobility on products and resources. Introducing mobile robots able to navigate in the shopfloor and utilize dexterous tooling to perform multiple operations.
- Enabling perception of the task and the environment using a) the individual resource’s and b) collaborative perception by combining sensors of multiple resources
- Dynamic balancing of workload. Allowing the resources to communicate over a common network and automatically adjust their behaviour by sharing or reallocating tasks dynamically.
- Fast programming and automatic execution of new tasks by a) automatically generating the robot program for new products and b) applying skills over the perceived environment to determine required adaptations
- Safe human robot collaboration, eliminating physical barriers, by introducing cognitive abilities that allow the detection of humans and their intentions
THOMAS will demonstrate and validate its developments in the automotive and the aeronautics industrial sectors.
Fields of science
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaeronautical engineering
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
265 04 Rio Patras
Greece