At this year’s edition of the Advanced Factories fair, the Eurecat technology centre will be showing a solution developed with the company Jansa to automate the assembly process for metal parts in construction industry beams, which can be applied to collaborative robotics.
The project makes it possible to plan the robot’s trajectory in real time using 3D scanning, so ‘it can locate the different parts and automatically prepare and execute the operations needed to carry out the required assembly’, explains Lucía Pérez, a researcher from Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
Using the planning technology developed, the robot ‘responds dynamically to changes in the geometry or presentation of the parts’ and, moreover, the dynamic nature of the trajectory generation ‘enables real-time adaptation based on process feedback’, she adds.
The technology comes under the concept of collaborative robotics ‘because it also allows human-robot interaction with the goal of the operator being able to validate the part and its position and move on to the soldering process comfortably and safely’, says Daniel Serrano, the director of Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
As stated by Joan Juanola, director of Jansa Metal, ‘we’re heading towards Industry 4.0, an unprecedented generational and technological shift, where robotics interact with workers, achieving more competitiveness, productivity, safety at work and quality with zero error’.
Industry 4.0, a paradigm shift in product design and manufacturing
In the words of Jesús Boschmonart, Eurecat’s head of Resource, Energy and Construction Business, the digitalisation introduced by Industry 4.0 ‘represents a paradigm shift in the way that products are designed and manufactured’, making it possible to make ‘more efficient, flexible, sustainable’ production systems ‘and to encourage personalisation’.
‘Industry has experienced some years of deep technological transformation involving the hybridisation of technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing and cybersecurity, which entail big changes and opportunities in production processes, products and business models’, notes Guillem Quintana, Eurecat’s Business Development director.
