FORobotics - Research project on teamwork MRK/ mobile robots

FORobitcs, a large multi-year project to research the teamwork of mobile and collaborative robots, was completed a few weeks ago. Of the project volume of €4.2 million, €2 million was provided by the Bavarian Research Foundation. 2,2 Mio€ were provided by the industrial partners as own contribution. These are:

• Areva
• Bertrandt
• Grenzebach
• Stapler mechanical engineering
• IHK Swabia
• ITQ
• Krones
• MAN
• Mangelberger
• Mayser
• Metrilus
• MRK Systems
• PTM mechatronics
• Roboception
• SALT Solutions
• Software Factory
• software4production
• Stäubli
• Teamware
• Yaskawa

The scientific side was also broadly based, so the meetings must have been correspondingly well attended:

• University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich
• Fraunhofer Institute for Foundry, Composites and Processing Technology IGCV
• Fraunhofer Institute: Institute for Integrated Circuits ISS
• TU Munich: Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management
• University of Augsburg: Chair of Engineering Informatics with focus on Production Informatics
• FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg: Chair of Manufacturing Automation and Production Systems
• FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg: Chair of Information Technology with focus on communication electronics
• University of Bayreuth: Chair of Applied Computer Science III: Robotics and Embedded Systems
• RWTH Aachen University: Institute for Industrial Engineering

As can be seen in the video, for example, research was conducted into which gestures a person typically uses when they want to show something, e.g. force a vehicle to stop.
In my opinion, research projects always have a disadvantage: they take a relatively long time, so that some of their findings no longer seem new at the time of publication. But the findings have certainly been implemented before and I think that not every finding/development is shown publicly.

Particularly in the area of gestures, new ground was probably broken here, as the statements of project manager Julia Berg suggest. For example, a robot is supposed to act when you look at it for a longer time and want its attention:

(The mentioned response is being researched from various sides).

The following video shows a concrete application: For engine assembly, the robot takes over three work steps:

1. The robot grabs motors from the shelf and stores them on its platfrom
2. Transport of the motors to the assembly station
3. Robot assists worker in mounting the motors in designated holder

In own matter/ advertising
The author of this blog is available for market research or even a walk through your production/manufacturing or by phone based on photos/descriptions at a fixed price(detail), to then make concrete proposals for the use of cobots and other robots incl. funding opportunities. Both SMEs and large companies are visited. Among other things in Bavaria a 50% investment promotion is conceivable. The standard book about cobots also comes from him. In addition, he is very familiar with the KfW-Corona programs (incl. exemptions).