ToMM - Collaborative Team of Man and Machine

Purpose and goal

The overall objective is to evaluate the possibilities, the flexibility and the requirements for establishing a collaborative team of a robot and an operator (HRC). The objectives of the project are to: Increased knowledge of emerging technologies for HRC Develop physical and/or virtual demonstrators viewing possibilities and needs for HRC oOne for placement of light-weighted objects with a huge size oOne for heavy lifting in few variants oOne for heavy and large component assembly Identify areas to further develop in order to affect future regulations and technology

Results and expected effects

The technologies in the area of HRC are emerging rapidly and the standardization work globally is intensive. Several robot suppliers are launching new collaborative robots with different solutions for safety management. However, up to now it is only possible to implement a light-weight robot in a collaborative assembly task after performing a careful risk assessment. The project evaluated three cases and the analysis gave i.e. safety is a crucial aspect to solve in a HRC cell, it is challenging to implement a HRC in an assembly task on a moving line and the operator must be involved.

Approach and implementation

The three cases where selected by the industrial partners as potential task suitable for human-robot collaborative assembly. The placement of panels and the heavy lifting was demonstrated both virtually and physically on a conceptual base. The assembly of a heavy and large component was only demonstrated virtually. The analysis is cross cased based and support the theory in the area that indicates the need for industrial case driven research in this field for the moment.