The EU funded Horizon 2020 project DrapeBot aims at the development of a human-robot collaborative draping process for carbon fiber composite parts. PROFACTOR is currently setting up a test area in its in-house robotics laboratory with a large ABB robot (reach of about 3m, payload of 200kg). The experimental setup will be put into operation in May.
In January and February 2022 construction of the DrapeCell at Profactor started. The robotic workcell includes a large ABB robot with a reach of about 3m and a payload of 200kg.
The workcell had to fulfill several, partially contradicting requirements. A key element was the stability of the whole setup to make sure that the robot can move (and stop) when carrying the large gripper, which is now close to the upper limit of the allowed payload. On the other hand the robotic platform needs to be transportable so that it can be installed at Dallara and Baltico as planned later in the project. Therefore, a modular structure was chosen for the platform, which allows to disassemble it into smaller components that are manageable in terms of size and weight. The robot is mounted on a base, so that it is at a more suitable height for collaborating with the human operators and picking up large patches of material from a table.
First tests have already been conducted to make sure that the robot is moving and all standard software components are working. The next step will be to integrate the required safety fence and to set up the computing hardware that will interact with the sensors for human perception, the gripper’s control unit and the robot. This will take place in the following weeks, so that a first integration test can take place in May 2022.
Contact:
DI Dr. Christian Eitzinger
Head of Machine Vision
Tel.: +43 (0)7252 885-250
Fax: +43 (0)7252 885-101
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