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.
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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.
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