German Robot System Integration Championship 2022
Once again IGMR successfully participated in the German Championship (formerly the Olympics) in Robot System Integration at FANUC Germany!
This year’s task was the variable loading and palletising of boxes. In addition to the independent design of the entire cell, both real and virtual, the implementation also included the digital drawing of components, the setting of safety functions, error detection, user friendliness and instructions, as well as the integration of sensors, actuators and cameras.
Simon Strauch and Florian Menz competed under the team name “IGMR“, while Frederick van Kerkom and Sebastian Polzin took part as the “RWTH“ team. They were accompanied by former participant Sophie Charlotte Keunecke as their coach.
The four students have been working independently with the FANUC Education Cell in the IGMR in their free time over the past few months, learning TP programming and simulation in RoboGuide. The effort was worth it!
Team IGMR presented a very impressive real and virtual Cell installation, implementing every menu option for customer convenience and error handling.
Team RWTH achieved the fastest lap times in both timings with 57 seconds and shone with a very detailed simulation and documentation. We are very proud of all four participants for their great performance!
A special thanks to FANUC Germany for the great implementation and the exceptional cooperation.
The FANUC Education Cell is an essential part of the practical teaching of robotics and offers students the opportunity to try out the handling of industrial robots and the use of frames (coordinate systems) and to carry out or verify their own experiments and measurements.
Contact: Sophie Charlotte Keunecke
Presentation of the “ErgoFli” project at the KT Colloquium 2022
The aim of the ZIM-funded project “ErgoFli” is to develop an intelligent, semi-automatic tiling aid. Its intuitive user interface, automated handling of tiles and tile adhesive, and intelligent control system are expected to reduce non-ergonomic postures by up to 66%. The ErgoFli can be moved with a motorised drive and uses linear laying kinematics to lay tiles without direct wall contact using the buttering-floating method. Tiles in two formats, 30x60 cm or 60x60 cm, can be laid in a cross bond. The robot is equipped with a tile and tile adhesive reservoir so that it can be used for at least 30 minutes without refilling and can lay 12 m2 per hour while maintaining the required standard flatness tolerances.
Using a digital twin, an early prototype has already been tested in various scenarios. While the prototype is being designed in standard CAD software, the actual model is being integrated into the Gazebo simulation environment in parallel. This enables continuous integration and testing of control system software packages in application-related scenarios. For example, real test data can be transferred to the digital twin via a closed-loop simulation. The three laser profile sensors of the tile gripper are attached to a prototype gripper and mounted on a UR10 robot arm. The measured values from the sensors can then be transferred to the digital twin in the simulation, despite the different kinematics. In this way, the position control of the gripper can be integrated into the overall system at an early stage by measuring the joint widths.
Contacts:
Jan Wiartalla
Marius Gürtler
Automatic Robot-Guided Form Scan and Coating
In this project, the forms are detected and their edges are realized by a laser scanner mounted on the end effector of the robot. The collected data are synchronized and filtered, and a suitable trajectory is created for coating the inner surface of the forms. Several variables, such as the speed of the nozzle, distances and gaps, the size of the nozzle and the outlier for a homogeneous coating can be selected during the trajectory planning.
Motivation
The project was initiated with the motivation to increase flexibility in scanning and coating various molds.
Method
In the context of this project, synchronization is required between three systems
The sensor software, which is responsible for the acquisition of the data (synchronized with movement of the robot).
The program, which is responsible for post-processing the data and calculating the trajectories for the robot.
The Robot control system, which receives the information of the trajectory and executes it immediately.
Partner
International Partners in Glass Research (IPGR) e.V.
Contact: Markus Schmitz
Watch the video on our Youtube Channel: here.
Music: Corbyn Kites – Blurry Vision
Programming courses with the FANUC Education Cell and RoboGuide
One of the key factors in working with robots at the IGMR is not only the theoretical consideration, calculation and optimisation of movement or mechanics, but in particular the practical work and handling of the systems, as well as the various programming tasks. The FANUC Education Cell is at the heart of this practical teaching, and is also an integral part of the Robotic Systems lecture and robotics courses at the International Academy. In addition to the lectures, the IGMR, represented by Carlo Weidemann, winner of the FANUC Olympiad 2020, also offers internal user courses for employees and gives them the opportunity to work independently on the cell.
Are you a student at the RWTH and interested in working with robots such as the FANUC LR Mate 200iD 4S or carrying out projects? Perhaps you have a concrete idea for a thesis involving the robot? Then please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you!
Contacts:
Carlo Weidemann
Sophie Charlotte Keunecke
AKPro students present impressive project results at Trapo AG
Last year the projects for the course “Applied Design and Product Development I / II” were provided and supervised by Trapo AG. Now the students had the opportunity to visit Trapo AG in Gescher and present the results to the management, and after the presentations the students were able to visit the different areas of Trapo AG and have a look at the production and finishing. Congratulations to all AKPro participants on the very successful completion of their projects! Many thanks to Trapo AG for supporting the projects and for the opportunity to visit.
Contacts:
First movement of PARAGRIP with new control unit
PARAGRIP’s control architecture has been completely redesigned in order to be fully equipped for its future tasks in multidirectional additive manufacturing (MDAM) with arc welding (WAAM). The movements of all four arms can now be planned, simulated and executed on the real robot using MoveIt in ROS2. The joint positions of the physical robot are always fed back to ROS2, allowing the integration of online planning algorithms in the future. The video shows the planning and execution of a simple test motion of the PARAGRIP.
More information about the project can be found here.
Contact: Jan Wiartalla
IGMR Consensus In Sensor Robot Network
Agile and freely networked assembly systems are characterised by the sensoric-supported cooperation of several mobile and stationary robots. However, the dynamic transformation of the production lines demands especial control strategies for robotic manipulators. Fast and reliable motion planning and control schemes should be developed that appropriately react to the changes in the environment and setpoints, and produce feasible motions. These assembly systems can then be mapped into the structure of a meta-model that leads to the creation of digital shadows of the factories of the future.
Contact: Daniel Gossen
Watch the video on our Youtube channel: here.
A multi-layered task sequencing approach
Cobots are highly sought by manufacturing companies in contrast to fully automated production lines, as they provide the additional benefit of flexible operations. A major hurdle with current collaborative setups is tedious setup times for efficient and robust co-working as well as poor support for random interruptions.
This project focuses on enabling autonomous collaborative operations for serial manipulators where interruptions from human agents occur at random while ensuring minimal setup times. To this end, two primary aspects that impact task execution are addressed, namely execution time and co-working as enumerated below:
- A method is developed to minimise the total distance travelled, by following the most optimal sequence for the given task while retaining online operational capabilities
- A real-time replanning and co-working algorithm for randomly interruptive environments is developed and implemented to ensure continued operation even when regions of the workspace are occluded while guaranteeing safety of the human agents in the workspace. The co-working controller operates fully autonomously.
An example of the working of the deployed on a prototype platform consisting of a collaborative UR10e arm, a stereo camera for static environment mapping and a laser scanner for mapping of dynamic obstacles is shown in the video.
Contact: Daniel Gossen
music: madiRFAN – Both of Us (https://pixabay.com/music/beats-madirfan-both-of-us-14037/)
Watch the video on our Youtube channel: here.
IGOR Tper: The Robot with non-spherical wrist
The next generation of our robot is designed. The new robot is called IGOR Tper. This robot has a non-spherical wrist, that makes the motion planning for the robot rather challenging.
Contact:
Markus Schmitz
The IGMR visits the Automatica in Munich
After a long, involuntary break, IGMR was able to visit Automatica in Munich for the first time again. Together Jan Wiartalla, Amir Shahidi and Sophie Charlotte Keunecke explored various innovations and presentations and had many interesting conversations. In addition, some final year students of RWTH and IGMR presented their extremely interesting projects at Automatica and offered an exclusive view even beyond the exhibited possibilities.
On the last day of the fair, June 24. 2022, Sophie Charlotte Keunecke represented IGMR at a panel discussion on “Automation and robotics: what drives the new generation?” at the Automatica Forum. You can find the video here on the Youtube channel of Automatica.
Contacts:
Sophie Charlotte Keunecke
Jan Wiartalla
