Know our scientific goals
Robustness and reliability of reconfigurable robots
Robustness and reliability of reconfigurable robots are key performance indicators that determine the feasibility of using a robot in industrial environments. For a robotic system to be robust, its positioning should be accurate and repeatable within acceptable tolerances, while demonstrating high disturbance rejection.
Sustainable and energy efficient technologies
Sustainable and energy efficient industrial technologies are critical towards achieving the Green Deal’s targets; however, strong conflicting interdependencies makes it scientifically challenging to arrive at optimum solutions. Reducing energy consumption is important for reducing operation costs and environmental impact.
Industrially feasible optimised design solutions
Industrially feasible optimised design solutions account for quantitative and qualitative design variables. These are difficult to measure (e.g. aesthetics, manufacturability, etc). The optimisation problem’s multi-dimensional nature makes it computationally expensive and time consuming, leading to increased development cost and lead time.
Ensuring safe human-robot collaboration
Ensuring safe human-robot collaboration (HRC) has generated enormous interest in the scientific community owing to the potential of CoBots towards enhancing flexibility and productivity of manufacturing systems. Ensuring safe HRC presents multiple challenges ; amongst these collision detection, avoidance, and response are of particular interest from the perspective of CoBot development as these depend on the CoBot’s interaction with its environment and its response to external stimuli.
Low latency real time operational strategies
Low latency real time operational strategies are critical towards ensuring safe and reliable operation of industrial robots. Safe task execution requires real-time path planning. Collision avoidance between the manipulator body and the human operators increases computational complexity and limits real time application . Robots additionally must be monitored using powerful controllers and should be able to respond to sudden changes in the operational area with swift interventions.