Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ACE (Autonomous Cable assembly Enabler) Período documentado: 2018-05-01 hasta 2018-08-31 Resumen del contexto y de los objetivos generales del proyecto Nowadays, electrical cable manufactures are demanding new solutions to upgrade their assembly lines from high-skilled manual work to fully automatic assembly. Market demand is moving to cables that need increase efficiency for high data transmission, which requires more complex cables and decreasing the connector size. Therefore, human labour to connect wires to connectors is becoming more time consuming due to quality requirements to assemble complex cables/connectors, significantly increasing the product cost and delivery times. This led to inquiry, innovation and foundation of Frisimos, which smart production lines are based on propriety knowledge in the fields of Robotics, Lasers, Machine Vision and Machine Learning. They have developed a modular set of machines (LayerRemove 2260, WireSort 3260 and WireSoler 4260) which will compensate the reduction of labour cost, in favour of increasing productivity and quality, with the higher production volumes required to satisfy demand. In addition to this, environmental benefits are also visible, as manufactures in Europe will be able to assemble cables at their production site, instead of sending the raw material to Asian countries, were labour cost is lower, thus significantly reducing the product footprint.Frisimos will face next steps in order to reach TRL 9 with the aim of launch to the market the different products within their brochure. Trabajo realizado desde el comienzo del proyecto hasta el final del período abarcado por el informe y los principales resultados hasta la fecha So far, Frisimos invested on the prototype development and demonstrations with end users. The units have been already tested with reference manufacturers in the market, demonstrating capabilities of handling not complicated cables (small amount of wires), however the goal is to develop the different machines and be able to process complex cables with no limitations. Avances que van más allá del estado de la técnica e impacto potencial esperado (incluida la repercusión socioeconómica y las implicaciones sociales más amplias del proyecto hasta la fecha) The market trend goes through replacing manual processes with automation and compared to current market solutions, our value proposition is based on a much higher productivity achieved with the fully automated assembly lines. In general, the competitor´s machines are used for individual stages along the assembly line but nothing explicit with a range of operations as ACE. In addition, our assembly lines have the unique characteristic of being able to assemble different types of cables in the same line, dramatically reducing production costs and time by an average of 80%.
