SDA2: Intelligent Reconfigurable Manufacturing Based on Robot-cells

Rapid changes in production and small production batches set SME-s into challenge to produce more rapidly and flexibly. One solution to stay in competition is to implement workplaces which are equipped with intelligent robot based work-cells.

The modern industrial robots and their technical solutions (software, programming flexibility, measuring ability) enable to create production programs rapidly (using 3D virtual environment) and to implement them quickly into production. Through monitoring the environment and using intelligent decision making there is possible to decrease the cycle times due to eliminating the non-value adding activities. The production processes where the robots have the great impact are following: finishing (grinding, polishing, deburring, painting), assembling (compose sub-assemblies, tack welding, gluing) and welding (MIG/MAG process, TIG welding). Intelligent robot cells development is important part of this SDA.

Here the increase of production efficiency can be between 100 %-300 % depending on the production process used, compared with the traditional (manual) production process.

Currently provided solutions of the production robots are not fully suitable for SME-s as they require a lot of effort during the implementation. Therefore the intelligent robot based work-cell development for reconfigurable manufacturing is one way to solve this problem. The methodology for co-operative networked engineering and manufacturing, based on new business-model and the possibilities of Internet-of –Things (IoT) is also important topic of the research area.

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The head of the development area: Priit Saaremets

E-mail: priit.saaremets@imecc.ee