BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena

KOPROD's main objective is to develop methods and technical solutions in an industrially relevant environment, for future competitive production of complex, small and medium volume products against cost-sensitive markets. Automation has helped manufacturing companies increase productivity and reduce costs for decades. The three manufacturing companies Mjøs Metallvarefabrikk AS, Sandvik Teeness AS and Tysse Mekaniske Verksted AS, as well as the sensor supplier Zivid Labs, all have great opportunities within cost-sensitive markets, where future competitiveness depends on increased automation of small and medium volume production of products with a wide range of variants. It is well documented that low unit cost for production combined with high complexity and low volume for each component or product variant, makes it difficult to automate. Furthermore, there is also broad agreement that it is possible to achieve reduced unit cost and increased flexibility through automation solutions based on human-robot collaboration in various forms. KOPROD will fill the identified gap between market opportunities and available cost-effective automation solutions. Development of automated assembly processes for each of the participating companies is a very big task that will require resources far beyond the project budget. Process mapping has been an important activity to find common cases that all three companies can benefit from, and to develop demonstrators that may include products / components from each company. This survey also provides important guidelines and recommendations for the research work. All three companies have complicated products that provide challenging assembly processes for robots alone. Also, the cooperation between robot and operators are challenging due to the operator safety and to avoid collision resulting in damage to the robot itself or the components transferred by the robot. Followed by this, one of the research activities is robot path planning to avoid collisions, and re-planning when obstacles are detected. Gripping the objects is normally a simple task but for unarranged parts and parts with shiny surfaces the gripping task is more challenging and difficult. Moreover, handling of such parts are challenging and we have therefore developed a method for reorientation to ensure proper orientation when an object is placed at its destination. Developing 3D depiction methods to be used both in detection and quality inspection of parts is therefore another research activity in the project. For the operators to be able to customize a robot program to minor changes in production without the operator being a programmer, research is being done to develop solutions for simple adaptive programming. What features are "fixed" and will not change if there are minor changes in the product or process and what the operator should be able to change easily in order to customize a product or process, becomes part of the development process. A framework and software solution have been developed for effective robot programming of an assembly operation based on CAD models. A module is developed to adapt the robot program to different CAD-programs and different types of robots. The assembly operation is demonstrated using AR and VR models. This assembly operation has also been physically demonstrated in the lab, using a robot. An assembly task, using two collaborative robots has been demonstrated with AR and VR models. In the final stages of the project, the main focus has been on implementing and testing the robot program in the industrial environment, as well as improving accessibility for industrial applications through improved and simplified user interface. We have developed a robot cell demonstrator with 3D imaging and automatic picking of blank parts of different sizes. Before this, we did a systematic data recording to develop and evaluate algorithms for 3D localization of product parts as input to robotic assembly. We have also devised a system for handling parts in cases where the parts are located in such a way that the robot cannot pick and deliver the part in the same movement. The project has also continued to improve the data quality for 3D imaging of blank parts, and further work will also focus on this.

Prosjektet har dannet et godt fundament for ytterligere automatisering og rasjonalisering av produksjonen hos prosjektets industripartnere. Se forøvrig vedlagt sluttrapport.

KOPRODs hovedmål er å utvikle metoder og teknologiske løsninger frem til TRL 6 innen utgangen av 2019, som sikrer fremtidig konkurransedyktig produksjon av komplekse, små- og mellomvolum produkter mot kostnadssensitive markeder. Automatisering har hjulpet produksjonsbedrifter med å øke produktivitet og senke kostnader i flere tiår. De tre produksjonsbedriftene Mjøs Metallvarefabrikk AS, Sandvik Teeness AS og Tysse Mekaniske Verksted AS, i tillegg til sensorleverandøren Zivid Labs, står alle ovenfor store muligheter innenfor kostnadssensitive markeder, hvor fremtidig konkurranseevne avhenger av økt automatiseringsgrad knyttet til små- og mellomvolum produksjon av et stort variantspekter av produkter. Det er godt dokumentert at lav enhetskostnad for tilvirkning, kombinert med høy kompleksitet og lave volum for hver enkelt komponent eller produktvariant vanskeliggjør automatisering. Videre er det også bred enighet om at det er mulig å oppnå redusert enhetskostnad og økt fleksibilitet gjennom automasjonsløsninger basert på menneske-robot-samarbeid i ulike former. KOPROD skal fylle det identifiserte gapet mellom markedsmuligheter og tilgjengelige kostnadseffektive automasjonsløsninger. For å oppnå dette skal KOPROD forske frem, utvikle, integrere og evaluere nye teknologiløsninger for trygge og adaptive robotoperasjoner, intuitiv og effektiv robotprogrammering, samt robust 3D avbildning for griping og kvalitetskontroll. Dette vil føre til innovasjoner på både nasjonal og int. basis. Verdiskapingspotensialet fra prosjektet kommer blant annet til syne i prognoser om økt omsetning for både produksjonsbedriftene og sensorleverandøren. Realiseringen av verdiskapingspotensialet skal sikres gjennom at prosjektet er strategisk forankret og sterkt knyttet opp mot interne prosjekter i bedriftene, hvor kompetanse- og teknologioverføring og implementering av resultater fra KOPROD ivaretas. Det er forventet at resultatene fra prosjekt vil ha stor overføringsverdi til annen ind.