Flexible, adaptive industrial assembly: driving innovation through competition

Abstract

Robotics competitions stimulate the next generation of cutting edge robotics solutions and innovative technologies. The World Robot Summit (WRS) Industrial Assembly challenge posed a key research challenge: how to develop adaptive industrial assembly robots. The overall goal is to develop robots where minimal hardware or software changes are required to manufacture a new or altered product. This will minimise waste and allow the industry to move towards a far more flexible approach to manufacturing; this will provide exciting new technologies for the manufacturing industry and support many new business models and approaches. In this paper, we present an approach where general-purpose grippers and adaptive control approaches have been developed to move towards this research goal. These approaches enable highly flexible and adaptive assembly of a belt drive system. The abilities of this approach were demonstrated by taking part in the WRS Industrial Assembly Challenge. We achieved second place in the kitting challenge and second place in the adaptive manufacturing challenge and were presented with the Innovation Award.

Systematic Mapping Literature Review of Mobile Robotics Competitions

“…A theme very commonly found in the robotics competitions was industry, like RoboCup Work and RoboCup Logistics League, WRS Assembly task, ARIAC, RoCKIn@Work and SICK robot day [ 37 , 38 , 48 , 59 , 75 , 76 , 77 ]. Robot@Factory and MicroFactory have a focus on education, but their themes are focused on industry and logistics too [ 41 , 46 , 63 , 67 ].…”

“…Robot@Factory and MicroFactory have a focus on education, but their themes are focused on industry and logistics too [ 41 , 46 , 63 , 67 ]. Other types of competitions found were those facing the domestic field, like RoboCup@Home, WRS Service Challenge, RoCKIn@Home and RoboWaiter, which their challenges usually are to perform house tasks in order to help elderly people or those with disabilities [ 6 , 25 , 28 , 37 , 75 ].…”

“…In the robotics competitions focused on industry, the challenges can vary between transport products and logistics tasks, in which the robots must navigate, avoid obstacles and deliver products in correct positions, perform assembly tasks and kitting processes, build kits by picking up items, organize materials in warehouses, among others [ 37 , 38 , 41 , 46 , 48 , 59 , 63 , 67 , 75 , 76 , 77 ]. There also are challenges addressed to evaluate the robot speed, like activities in a maze (Micromouse) or delivering as many objects as possible (SICK robot day), in these kind of tasks the robots needs to be as fast as possible [ 3 , 38 , 60 , 70 ].…”

“…It is an international competition started in October 2018, organized by the Japanese government to accelerate research and development of robots in the areas of daily life, society and industry in order to promote a world where humans and robots successfully live and work together [59,75].…”

The Impact of Robotics in the Economic of the Industrial Countries: Comprehensive Study

“…The robots can cover most tasks such as pick, drill, package, cutting operation, coating, assembling operation and much more. [3].The main types of industrial robots are six they can be classified as big machines they can be used in heavy industries such as Cartesian, SCARA, Cylindrical, Bin picking robotics and Medium payload handling robotic.…”