Automation marches on

Stationary industrial robots are ideal for performing repetitive, monotonous tasks as parts steadily flow by on a moving production line. But they’re hardly economical when producing massive parts, such as ones for airplanes, ships and wind turbines, because a robot might be idle for days or weeks after performing its task before the next part arrives.

Nonetheless, manufacturing huge parts involves tedious, stressful duties best handled by robots because they help a company’s most-valuable assets, its workers, perform functions more suited to the human body and mind. For those applications, mobile robots that can work side-by-side with people and assist them are desirable. That’s the goal of the VALERI project, short for validation of advanced, collaborative robotics for industrial applications, explained José Saenz, who heads the project at Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF.

Courtesy of KUKA Roboter

The platform for the VALERI project is the KUKA “omniRob” robot, which possesses 12 degrees of freedom.

“The elements of an airplane fuselage, for example, are too large for them to be adapted to a conventional production robot. You cannot rotate or turn them so that the system can work on them,” he said. “So, it has to be the other way around. The robot drives to the desired location in the airplane.”

The platform for the project is based on the “omniRob” lightweight robot from KUKA Roboter GmbH, Augsburg, Germany, Saenz noted. A multiple-extension grip arm called “the manipulator” is located on a drivable platform. The complete robotic system possesses 12 degrees of freedom to provide a “large action radius,” enabling it to rotate and move forward, backward, up, down and sideways.