Shared Decision Making and Progressive Automation for Manufacturing Assembly

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The Canadian manufacturing industry is facing a critical need for innovation to improve the productivity, accuracy, flexibility and safety in manufacturing. This research project aims to develop the next generation of robotic technologies to enable automation of assembly operations in manufacturing, driving improvements in productivity, accuracy, flexibility, reconfigurability and ease of use for Canadian businesses. A key idea behind our approach is the development of tools for progressive automation, starting from existing (manual) assembly processes. This approach will enable companies to incrementally automate the assembly process, reducing capital costs and increasing flexibility, and enabling automation of even rapidly changing assembly processes. This will be accomplished through the development of five key technologies: reconfigurable robotics, accurate facility wide perception and localization, online task learning, monitoring and replanning, and human-machine interaction. We will develop reconfigurable robots that can be adapted to rapidly changing production requirements, and which can be easily reconfigured to handle task changes on the assembly line. A combined static and dynamic motion capture system will be developed to enable tracking of assembly components, tools, robotic platforms and human operators. The proposed system will operate in close collaboration with human operators to facilitate task learning, operator guidance and shared-autonomy decision making. Operator feedback will be used for correction and adaptation as the robot starts to perform (a subset of) the tasks. The accurate measurement of operator movement will also be used to allow the system to synchronize its actions to the operator, and provide feedback to the operator and modify plans when a task sequence deviation is detected. The approach will enable seamless operation of the human-robot team by making feedback from and control of the robot easily accessible, understandable and useful, facilitating communication between human and robot team members, and maximally leveraging human knowledge to accomplish team tasks.