Cognitive Informatics Communication - closing the mental gap between the industrial robot and the human operator

Small- and medium sized enterprises (SME) are currently in a challenging situation. On one hand, they are small, flexible and have low overhead costs compared to bigger enterprises. On the other hand, they are dependent on manual work force which makes th eir competitiveness dependent on the wage level which is significantly higher in Western Europe and USA compared to Eastern Europe and Asia. In addition the SMEs have normally limited competence about robotics and automation which traditionally has slowed down the investment speed for industrial robots. Due to the increasing requirements to productivity and EHS (Environment, Health and Safety), the SMEs have a high pressure to invest in industrial robot systems. This industrial PhD has developed new indu strial robot technology which makes the robots easy to use, easy to reprogram to new task; and thus, make the industrial robots more suitable for SMEs. The core to obtain this, it to develop and apply a new type of service oriented user interfaces on the industrial robot so the operator can request a service eg. ?Pick this box and put into onto the first table?; demonstrated by modern graphics, which is in big contrast to the traditional ?Run program 232 and 413?. This provides a very intuitive and e fficient communication between the operator and the robot; thus, reducing the initial training time from hours to minutes, and then, making industrial robots available for even unskilled people.

This project is going to focus on the development of new robot technology which make the industrial robot easy to program and use; and thus, make it possible to use industrial robots even for small companies with limited resources and knowledge about robo t technology.The core in this robot technology the cognitive communication between the human operator and the industrial robot system, thus, utilizing multimodal communication through the human senses to transfer information from the robot system to the b rain of the human operator. This will make the operation and reprogramming of the industrial robot intuitive and efficient; thus, providing easy setup and changeover, and thus cost efficient one-of-a-kind production to the SMEs. The technology being deve loped will be especially related to the programming of the industrial robots because this is the crucial factor to maintain the SMEs flexibility to provide one-of-a-kind production according to customers' requests. The project will educate an Industrial P hD within this field, but in addition, provide new, industrial related technology. The project is organized as a collaboration between Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE) and the high tech, research based, industrial robot system integ rator, PPM AS in Trondheim which is the project leader. BUTE, Dept.of Mechatronics, Optics and Applied Informatics is responsible for graduating the PhD within the scope of this project.