Model-Driven Robotic Assembly

The purpose of this project is to develop a platform for evaluating and improving the performance of robotic assembly operations. This includes the assembly strategy, finger design, and a product’s ease of assembly. SDU Robotics is involved in several research projects that address the fast setup of robots for assembly processes that require high reliability and execution success rates. These projects include MADE digital, where the assembly of thermostats and electronics is considered. Experiences gained through e.g. the assembly challenge at World Robot Summit 2018 indicate that it is challenging to obtain a high success rate of assembly tasks since it is difficult to determine the root cause of failure from the available data acquired from measurements available at the robot. Furthermore, many parameters such as robot speed and compliance need to be manually adjusted to obtain acceptable robot behaviors. Consequently, an external sensor system is developed in this project that allows the analysis of the fundamental barriers to highly reliable robotic assembly and makes it possible to develop detailed models of the assembly process, which can be used for model-based design of highly reliable assembly strategies.