An approach on simplifying the commissioning of collaborative assembly workstations based on product-lifecycle-management and intuitive robot programming

Abstract

Today’s trends in the manufacturing industry lead to shorter product- lifecycles and smaller batch sizes with an increasing number of variants in the product range. These trends make it increasingly difficult to implement fully automated production processes economically. One approach that nevertheless makes the advantages of process automation accessible is partial automation through the application of human-robot collaboration (HRC). Small and medium-sized companies, in particular, lack the necessary expertise to successfully implement this technology. Standardized planning systems can bridge these competence gaps. This paper presents a system of this kind. The combination of product-lifecycle-management with collaboration-specific process planning significantly simplifies the commissioning of HRC-processes in dynamic process environments. In addition, a graphical user-interface, makes robot programming more intuitive in order to avoid the tedious training of code-based robot programming.