Enhanced awareness for mobile cobots in manufacturing assembly

在工业可用的大量机器人体系结构中，最近出现了新的范例。更具体地说，协作机器人技术近年来经历了令人印象深刻的增长，并渗透到许多新的市场，特别是中小企业之间，它们以前不愿安装机器人和自动化设备，原因不仅是财务风险，而且首先是关于人员健康和安全的风险。协作机器人(通常缩写为Cobots)通过提供最具吸引力的特征来缓解这一主要问题，即能够与人类近距离工作，而不会危及人类，也不需要复杂而昂贵的安全设备。Kinova是加拿大为数不多的机械臂制造商之一，也是世界上少数几家将设计重点放在以人为中心的应用程序上的制造商之一。对于制造业来说，他们的产品仍然是新的，他们的产品已经为该行业的协作机器人革命而制造。该项目旨在开发Kinova将与其产品一起提供的软件、抓取设备和算法，以促进他们在该市场的整合。然而，我们并不坚持常见的固定工业机械手设置，而是旨在通过专注于移动操纵来使Kinova在市场上获得真正的优势。我们的场景是几个移动机械手合作为制造和组装工地提供燃料，同时维护工人的安全。对于Kinova和加拿大机器人行业来说，能够达到并展示高水平的安全是至关重要的。该项目将为测试和验证移动Cobots在制造业的部署铺平道路。除了验证，这项研究还将解决制造业部署移动Cobots面临的根本挑战。我们的机械工程方法旨在为装配工作站带来计量级的精度，即使在移动基座上安装机械手也是如此。在我们的方法中，我们将利用双臂适配抓取装置、基于模型的几何抓取学习和以操作员为中心的桌面校准。然后，当移动Cobot自主离开工作站时，它可能会在压力大的环境中成为工人的累赘，危险重重。我们的目标是同时进行轮式机器人的可解释运动和人类在船上的检测，为适应周围工人的运动提供了新的潜力。

Among the vast range of robotic architectures available to industry, new paradigms have recently emerged. More specifically, collaborative robotics has experienced an impressive growth in recent years and has penetrated many new markets, especially between SMEs, which were previously reluctant to install robotic and automated devices due to the risk, not only financial but first and foremost with respect to the health and safety of human personnel. Collaborative robots (commonly abbreviated cobots) alleviate this major concern by offering the most attractive feature of being able to work in close proximity with a human being without endangering the latter and not requiring complex and costly safety equipment. Kinova is one of the few Canadian manufacturers of robotic arms, and one of the few worldwide that focus their design on human-centered applications. Still new to the manufacturing sector, their products are already made for the collaborative robotic revolution of the industry. This project aims at developing software, grasping devices and algorithms that Kinova will be providing alongside their products to facilitate their integration in that market. However, we do not stick to the common fixed setup of industrial manipulators, but rather aim at giving Kinova a real edge on the market by focusing on mobile manipulation. Our scenario is several mobile manipulators cooperating to feed manufacturing and assembly stations while maintaining the workers' safety. For Kinova and for the Canadian robotic industry, it is of the utmost importance to be able to reach and demonstrate high levels of safety. This project will pave the way to testing and validation of mobile cobots deployment in the manufacturing sector. More than validation, this research will address fundamental challenges to the deployment of mobile cobots in the manufacturing sector. Our mechanical engineering approach aims at bringing metrology-level accuracy to the assembly work station even with manipulators on mobile bases. Among our methods we will leverage dual arm adapted grasping device, model-based geometric grasping learning and operator-centric on-table calibration. Then, when the mobile cobot leaves the workstation autonomously, it may become a liability to the workers in a stressful environment with numerous dangers. We aim at doing explainable motion of wheeled robots and human on-board detection simultaneously, granting the novel potential for adaptive explainable trajectories to surrounding workers movements.