SBIR Phase I: Smart Robotic Sanding Cells for Composite Parts in High-Mix Applications

SBIR第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是提高制造业工人的生活质量，帮助美国制造商在全球市场保持成本竞争力，并提高制造部件质量的一致性。拟议的机器人单元将减少工人执行符合人体工程学的打磨任务的需要，并降低打磨生产线上工人受伤的风险。拟议的技术将使人类操作员能够专注于制造任务的高层决策和创造性方面，而机器人助手将执行低级繁琐的任务。这将允许操作员更多地作为团队进行协作，从而提高工人的生产率。目前，仅在美国就有3000多家公司在从事复合材料制造。他们中的大多数都面临着挑战，因为工人短缺和高流失率导致交货时间更长。拟议的工作将使制造商能够提高质量和降低成本。此外，它将使制造商能够通过减少对人力的依赖来缩短部件交付的时间，并通过增加或移除机器人单元来轻松地根据需求的变化来扩大产能。拟议工作的总体目标是开发一种用于高混合应用的机器人打磨工艺。这项技术将使机器人能够根据任务描述自动生成并安全地执行轨迹，从而对自己进行编程，并考虑到环境中存在的不确定性。机器人工具将通过快速执行安全高效地执行与复合材料制造相关的砂光项目来缩短周期时间。通过采用适当的传感器和工具，开发用于在机器人单元中快速、安全地定位工件的算法，并评估砂磨后表面质量和研磨介质的状态，将开发出机器人砂光单元。打磨仪器将向人工操作员提供启动另一次机器人打磨过程或更换研磨介质的建议。该奖励反映了NSF的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impacts of this SBIR Phase I project are in improving the quality of life of the manufacturing workers, helping U.S. manufacturers remain cost-competitive in the global market, and improving consistency in the quality of the manufactured parts. The proposed robotic cells will reduce the need for workers to perform ergonomically challenging sanding tasks and reduce the risk of worker injuries on sanding lines. The proposed technologies will enable the human operators to focus on high-level decision making and the creative aspects of the manufacturing tasks, while the robotic assistants will perform the low-level tedious tasks. This would allow human operators to collaborate more as a team and thereby improve worker productivity. Currently, there are more than 3000 companies in the U.S. alone doing composite fabrication. Most of them face challenges due to a shortage of workers and high labor churn leading to longer delivery times. The proposed work will enable manufacturers to improve quality and lower costs. Moreover, it will enable manufacturers to reduce time to part delivery by reducing reliance on human labor and easily scale production capacity with changes in demand by adding or removing robotic cells.The overall goal of the proposed effort is to develop a robotic sanding process for high-mix applications. The technology will enable robots to program themselves by automatically generating and safely executing trajectories based on the task description, accounting for the uncertainties present in the environment. The robotic tools will reduce cycle time by fast execution of safe and efficient execution of sanding project related to the fabrication of composite materials. A robotic sanding cell will be developed by incorporating appropriate sensors and tools, developing algorithms for fast and safe workpiece localization in the robotic cell, and assessing the post-sanding surface quality and the state of the abrasive media. The sanding instrumentation will provide recommendations to the human operator for initiating another robotic sanding pass or changing the abrasive media.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.