We’re entering the early stages of the golden age of robotics. Robotics is already a huge multibillion-dollar market that is dominated by industrial robotics (IR) found, e.g., on automotive assembly lines around the world. These robots perform basic tasks repeatedly and are usually separated by caged walls from humans for safety. However, this is rapidly changing. Advances in perception, driven by deep learning, machine vision and intelligent software allow robots to safely navigate the real world, escape the manufacturing cages, and closely interact with humans. Today, IR and cobots are widely used to automate tasks. The service robot (SR) is being more common as new SRs are being brought to the market. SRs are designed to work in an unstructured environment, but they have a very limited ability to work in unstructured operations. Also, SR demands a programmer to implement static motion planning for each given task. To address this market need, the overall objective of our Eurostars project is to develop an innovative SR with a Cognitive Robotic Interface that will democratize robotics in the manufacturing and healthcare industry, being able to work in unstructured operations and bring robotic to a new level.
The main R&D challenges associated with this project are: 1) simplification of the SR programming; 2) efficient integration developing a solution with low production cost; 3) SR positioning and understanding of its surroundings.
This project will be carried out with our Danish partner RiACT as the project coordinator and lead applicant. Allinvent will act as leader and participant of several work packages, focusing on SR skills, hardware setup and tools development.
The Eurostars program will provide the necessary financial input to develop our innovative solution, which has a huge potential to positively disrupt current SME manufactures production. The completion of the project objectives is essential to ensure successful development process of our solution.