SBIR Phase II: Methodology for Applying Haptic Robotics to Agile Manufacturing

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段研究项目解决了第一阶段发现的安全、用户界面和性能挑战，同时使触觉机器人适应中型生产运行喷漆的制造环境。触觉是一个令人兴奋的领域，但行业采用一直很缓慢。然而，如果在中型喷漆等应用中没有触觉，这两种选择(全自动或全手动)就没有吸引力。机器人的短期编程成本高得令人望而却步，完全人工操作危及工人健康。技术革命性的触觉领域尚未给制造业带来革命性的变化。一些制造任务缺乏好的替代方案，特别是在中期生产中，人们必须在高成本、耗时的机器人编程和糟糕的工人健康之间做出选择。如果安全和直观，机器人和工匠的物理交互将使这些中间应用程序受益。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase-II research project addresses safety, user -interface, and performance challenges uncovered in Phase I while adapting a haptic robot to the manufacturing environment for medium-production-run paint spraying. Haptics is an exciting field, but industry adoption has been slow. Yet without haptics in applications like medium-run paint spraying, the two alternatives (fully automated or fully manual) are unappealing. Robots are prohibitively expensive to program for short runs, and fully manual operations endanger worker health.The technologically revolutionary haptics field has not yet revolutionized manufacturing. Some manufacturing tasks lack good alternatives, especially in medium run production, where one must choose between high-cost, time-consuming robot programming versus poor worker health. Physical robot-craftsperson interaction will benefit these middle applications, if safe and intuitive.