Description du projet
Des robots hybrides mobiles à deux bras pour une fabrication dynamiquement reconfigurable
Les équipements de fabrication incompatibles avec des opérations multiples réalisées dans des environnements dynamiques compromettent la performance des modèles de production en série. L’industrie de l’UE peine à s’appuyer sur une main-d’œuvre bon marché en raison de la hausse rapide des salaires et de l’augmentation des coûts de l’énergie et de la logistique. Par ailleurs, les robots standard ne sont pas capables d’effectuer des tâches manuelles entièrement automatisées en raison de facteurs tels que la grande variabilité des produits, les équipements de traitement dédiés et les frais de maintenance. C’est pourquoi le secteur manufacturier nécessite des concepts de production innovants qui mettent l’accent sur l’autonomie et la collaboration entre les ressources de production. Le projet THOMAS, financé par l’UE, concevra un atelier reconfigurable de manière dynamique en employant des robots autonomes, mobiles, à deux bras, capables de percevoir leur environnement, de collaborer entre eux et de travailler avec d’autres ressources de production et des opérateurs humains.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaeronautical engineering
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
IA - Innovation actionCoordinateur
265 04 Rio Patras
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