Periodic Reporting for period 3 - APRIL (multipurpose robotics for mAniPulation of defoRmable materIaLs in manufacturing processes)
Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-03-31
The APRIL Project was a 48 months Research and Innovation Action (RIA) that started on April 1st 2020, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research (grant agreement No 870142) under the domain of the Factories of the Future. The APRIL Project gathered 14 partners from 7 European countries, including SME manufacturing companies, SME associations, ICT consultants, research centers and universities.
The APRIL Project was a 48 months Research and Innovation Action (RIA) that started on April 1st 2020, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research (grant agreement No 870142) under the domain of the Factories of the Future. The APRIL Project gathered 14 partners from 7 European countries, including SME manufacturing companies, SME associations, ICT consultants, research centers and universities.
APRIL objectives aimed at providing a technological infrastructure and interoperable methods, tools, and services that enables affordable multipurpose autonomous dexterous robots that support fine manipulation of soft and deformable objects in six different manufacturing domains.
The APRIL solution can be seen as a three level modular solution that comprise: a layer of low level components (Low Level Engine Module) that supports and enhances the grasping and manipulation, a high level layer (High Level Control Module) that comprises a Knowledge Reasoning Engine Module (KREM) to enable task management and grasp planning in complex scenes, and foster a ground-breaking standardized perceptual system for supporting and managing objects and people.
(add april solution image)
Within this architecture, the APRIL solution prototype shall enable dextrous robotic innovation, support industrial workers and environment by offering the following key features:
• Scalable and beyond state of the art modular dextrous and multipurpose robotic solution supporting the assembling and processing of soft, deformable and flexible materials at the industrial production line environments. This means, to be scalable in functions, with high-level reasoning capabilities and positioned as an affordable high end product that could be adopted by the industrial sector and specially by SMEs.
• Improved Grasping and Manipulation (G&M) capabilities in order to be skilful and competent at handling different types of soft products while controlling their level of deformation; being able to manipulate at least three (3) types of flexible materials (food, plastics, papers, etc.) and managing manipulation of at least five (5) different characteristics (texture, size, shape, weight, colour, material composition, etc.).
• Able to supervise the information of products such as the colour, healthy state and other characteristics during handling.
• Support proactive safety preservation and ergonomic optimization, being safe to deploy around people with no guarding.
APRIL demonstrated its business oriented value and capabilities by testing and validating the APRIIL solution in six different demonstrative use cases; which handle different types of flexible deformable materials (from pillows to delicate food) in six different manufacturing environments and industrial domains: food, electronics, white line appliances, paper and footwear. The use case demonstrators enable real operative industrial environments and conditions.
(add april use cases image)
The APRIL Project was a 48 months Research and Innovation Action (RIA) that started on April 1st 2020, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research (grant agreement No 870142) under the domain of the Factories of the Future. The APRIL Project gathered 14 partners from 7 European countries, including SME manufacturing companies, SME associations, ICT consultants, research centers and universities.
APRIL objectives aimed at providing a technological infrastructure and interoperable methods, tools, and services that enables affordable multipurpose autonomous dexterous robots that support fine manipulation of soft and deformable objects in six different manufacturing domains.
The APRIL solution can be seen as a three level modular solution that comprise: a layer of low level components (Low Level Engine Module) that supports and enhances the grasping and manipulation, a high level layer (High Level Control Module) that comprises a Knowledge Reasoning Engine Module (KREM) to enable task management and grasp planning in complex scenes, and foster a ground-breaking standardized perceptual system for supporting and managing objects and people.
(add april solution image)
Within this architecture, the APRIL solution prototype shall enable dextrous robotic innovation, support industrial workers and environment by offering the following key features:
• Scalable and beyond state of the art modular dextrous and multipurpose robotic solution supporting the assembling and processing of soft, deformable and flexible materials at the industrial production line environments. This means, to be scalable in functions, with high-level reasoning capabilities and positioned as an affordable high end product that could be adopted by the industrial sector and specially by SMEs.
• Improved Grasping and Manipulation (G&M) capabilities in order to be skilful and competent at handling different types of soft products while controlling their level of deformation; being able to manipulate at least three (3) types of flexible materials (food, plastics, papers, etc.) and managing manipulation of at least five (5) different characteristics (texture, size, shape, weight, colour, material composition, etc.).
• Able to supervise the information of products such as the colour, healthy state and other characteristics during handling.
• Support proactive safety preservation and ergonomic optimization, being safe to deploy around people with no guarding.
APRIL demonstrated its business oriented value and capabilities by testing and validating the APRIIL solution in six different demonstrative use cases; which handle different types of flexible deformable materials (from pillows to delicate food) in six different manufacturing environments and industrial domains: food, electronics, white line appliances, paper and footwear. The use case demonstrators enable real operative industrial environments and conditions.
(add april use cases image)
The APRIL Project has successfully achieved all its objectives by the end of the project. The course of action within the APRIL Project has been organized in agile development cycles. The agile development has been transversal to the ten (10) work packages which ruled the operative, technical, and managerial activities of the project during three periods. The first period of the project started with a foundational phase that provided the building blocks to generate the bases for the project and ensured that the project was approaching the technical, functional and end users (use cases) requirements and needs. During the second period, APRIL partners focused on the development of the different APRIL modules and set into motion the refinement and implementation of the APRIL robotic infrastructure, modelling objects and the contextual environment to enable grasping development flexible materials, performing the initial testing for the robot fine grasping and movements in laboratory environments, including experiments for advanced grasping and human-robot interaction; to further deliver the APRIL core services to use cases demonstrators at the end of the project. And during the third and last period of the project, the APRIL partners put together and implemented a through integration roadmap plan that has allowed the customisation and validation of the APRIL modules and features to the different industrial domains and scenarios. In parallel, through all the project the dissemination and communication activities underpinned growing project recognition and engagement of new stakeholders as collaborators of the project.
Aiming at enabling the sustainability of APRIL Project outcomes in the scientific and manufacturing areas, the APRIL project underpinned new scientific and business oriented capabilities, supported by new market oriented paths which expect to create value to the European manufacturing sector, and specially to European SMEs. APRIL results shall impact society by effectively supporting collaborative approaches that overcome these labour intensive, repetitive and/or physically demanding work and empowering those workers.
Aiming at enabling the sustainability of APRIL Project outcomes in the scientific and manufacturing areas, the APRIL project underpinned new scientific and business oriented capabilities, supported by new market oriented paths which expect to create value to the European manufacturing sector, and specially to European SMEs. APRIL results shall impact society by effectively supporting collaborative approaches that overcome these labour intensive, repetitive and/or physically demanding work and empowering those workers.
The importance of activities and tasks developed in APRIL lies on the contribution to the advances and adoption of hand robots with fine manipulation of deformable and/or flexible objects in production lines, which can be found in many industrial domains, such as automobiles, textiles, electronic components or packaging. Most of the manipulation tasks involving the handling of deformable objects are done manually, which makes them labour intensive and time consuming. APRIL results will impact important manipulative operations dealing with deformable objects, such as whole body product manipulation, shape changing or biomanipulation (e.g. food). Nonetheless and overall, APRIL also shall impact society by effectively supporting collaborative approaches that overcome labour intensive, repetitive and/or physically demanding work, that could cause repetitive-strain injuries; while at the same time empowering, and integrating, shop floor workers in shaping of digital solutions and managerial actions.