Ultra-flat, ultra-flexible, cost-effective robotic pods for handling legacy in logistics

Project Information

ROPOD

Grant agreement ID: 731848

DOI

10.3030/731848

Project closed

EC signature date 27 October 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 30 April 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 3 926 375,00

EU contribution

€ 3 494 825,00

Coordinated by

Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ROPOD (Ultra-flat, ultra-flexible, cost-effective robotic pods for handling legacy in logistics)

Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2020-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The market for automatically guided vehicles (AGVs) in logistic applications is growing rather slowly in spite of the market potential that has been forecasted. There are markets and applications, which literally cry for automation by AGVs not only for economic, but also for socials reasons: hospitals and care facilities. Irrespective of the burning need there is a major barriers, however, which prevent such automation. Two of them are cost and legacy in existing logistic solutions. Today’s hospital logistic robots are bulky, heavy, and with a price of 50+ KEUR for a single vehicle they are very expensive. At the same time these AGVs are often highly specialised and can only deal with few containers or supply carts. In a typical logistic environment there are however, dozens of different containers and such carts. In a nutshell there is a bad need for AGVs, which are low-cost and can deal with a great variety of legacy.

The general objective of this proposal is to develop and implement a disruptive concept for AGVs that lowers the still existing barrier in logistics by offering
• cost-effective, automated or semi-automated indoor transportation of goods,
• while coping with existing legacy in terms of size, shape, and weight of goods and containers,
• without imposing disruptive changes in existing logistic solutions, such as rebuilding entire warehouses
or switching to new containers or storage technology.

We will put an equal emphasis on cost-effective as well as on human-friendly automation of logistic tasks. While cost-effectiveness shall be achieved by preferably using and adapting technology designed for mass-markets, human-friendliness shall be achieved by equipping the AGVs with a (semi-) autonomous shared control mode, in which the robot serves as a force amplifier for the human user and thereby reduces the physical strain on the user.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work in the first reporting period was mainly devoted to development of the various hardware and software components towards a Technology Readiness Level 4. The main focus of the hardware design was on the development of what the so-called Smart Wheel. This is a highly compact power unit, which includes high torque, high velocity, small direct drive hub wheels adapted from the electro scooter from the consumer market. The direct drive gear together with the high-resolution encoders and the pivot-mounted suspension are the key ingredient for the compliance of the power unit which is in turn key enabler for the design of safe mobile service robots.

At the end of the project the development of the Smart Wheel has reached TRL 7. The joint venture founded by the two SMEs, SMF Ketels and Locomotec, KELO Robotics is currently developing the Smart Wheel, which is now called KELO Drive, further to series production readiness. The series production shall start within less than a year after the project end.

Based on the first prototypes of the Smart Wheels we further designed a first version of a hospital logistics robot, a quasi-omnidirectional vehicle which can carry a payload of up to 500 kg. It has been equipped with a docking mechanism that can handle a variety of the supply carts.

The main focus of the software design in the first reporting period was the layout of the overall software system architecture and the development of algorithmic functionalities on TRL4. Work involved the selection of an overall conceptual framework – the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA) was adopted and implemented – the setup of the communication infrastructure.

The implementation of the first use-case, automatic transportation of supply carts, started in the second quarter of Year 2 and continued till the end of Year 3, involving several weeks of intensive testing in the AGAPLESION Markus Hospital in Frankfurt. These first reality checks have revealed a number of shortcomings of technology which is state of the art in academia but reaches its limits very quickly in reality. At the beginning of Year 3 the consortium developed a contingency plan to replace such purely academic solutions by several alternatives, which also take industrial solutions and standards into consideration. The implementation of the second use-case semi-autonomous transportation of a sick-bed using a flock of robots started at the beginning of the second reporting period and continue to the end of the project interrupted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A significant part of Year 3 was spent in TRL boosting the solutions for the various functionalities and also the overall architecture from lab prototypes to TRL 5 and 6 prototypes, where admittedly not all components reached TRL6. Two robots were subjected to a long-term stress test lasting from September 2019 until the outbreak of COVID-19. Together they travelled a distance of almost 1.000 km in a public partly crowded environment (see below).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Although the project had to struggle with quite a few adversities and learn some painful lessons, it is justified to say that the project has achieved nearly all of its objectives and even created technology, which was initially not included in the description of work.

Inspired by the platform concept in automotive industry we developed a platform concept for the design of mobile (logistic) robots. At the core of this platform concept is the idea to have a set of re-usable, scalable, modular building blocks, based on which we can rapidly design new robots and robotics applications and also address specific customer requirements. A key component in our platform concept is the SmartWheel. This drive has some outstanding properties that will also be essential for the future generations of mobile service robot, which are supposed to operate in close proximity to humans:
• The drive unit is inherently safe, which means it complies with an external force applied to its top plate and the vehicle frame, to which it is attached.
• Two or more drive units together can steer a robot omnidirectionally without each drive unit requiring a third actuator to rotate the drive unit around the vertical pivot axis.
• The design of the drive unit is instrumental to make the mobile (service) robots inherently safe by enabling it to comply with any external force applied to the vehicle.

Besides the SmartWheel we developed a number of other basic mechatronic building blocks, such as a scalable, modular multiple docking station, a universal towing mechanism which is capable of handling a large variety of roll container, a haptic interface and a concept for shared task execution. Based on the SmartWheel we built a variety of logistic platforms to show the flexibility of our overall concept.

We integrated the developed hardware and software components into two use-cases as promised in the proposal. One use-case focused on the transportation of roll-containers, so-called MobiDik carts, which are used to transport various good in the hospital, by an autonomous towing robot. The second use-case aimed at the semi-autonomous transportation of sickbeds. In this use-case a flock of two robots, which push and pull the sickbed, is controlled by a novel haptic interface used by the care person. The robots serve as force amplifiers, so that the care person can move the sickbed with minimal force.

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