Flex­i­ble Robot cell for force-con­trolled assem­bly of gearboxes

The soft­ware solu­tion from ArtiMinds is the key 

Using sen­sor tech­nol­ogy, the team taught the robot to see and feel and equipped the cell with a cam­era and a force-torque sen­sor. An indi­vid­ual grip­per sys­tem was added to han­dle the gears and shafts. The key to the smooth inter­ac­tion of all parts was the man­u­fac­turer-inde­pen­dent soft­ware solu­tion ArtiMinds Robot Pro­gram­ming Suite (RPS). “We were look­ing for a pro­gram­ming envi­ron­ment so that we wouldn’t have to touch the source code directly,” says Völz. “In the process, the RPS acted as an inter­face that cou­ples all the periph­er­als together.” 

Tech­ni­cal Man­ager Sascha Schwier explains: “For the process to run robustly, the sys­tem must be able to com­pen­sate for tol­er­ances inde­pen­dently. The only way to achieve this is through intel­li­gent com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the com­po­nents. We have prac­ti­cally built our spe­cial machine, yet we can still use it flex­i­bly thanks to the algo­rithms of ArtiMinds RPS.”

Primus was par­tic­u­larly impressed by the clear and intu­itive pro­gram­ming with the soft­ware. “ArtiMinds RPS offers many help­ful func­tions that make work eas­ier, such as the 3D sim­u­la­tion envi­ron­ment or the abil­ity to switch back and forth between online and offline mode depend­ing on require­ments,” lists Michael Castien, Robot Pro­gram­mer at Primus Präzi­sion­stech­nik. “The very big advan­tage is that I can use a sin­gle plat­form to har­mo­niously inte­grate and con­trol all com­po­nents and sen­sors such as robots, cam­eras, force-torque sen­sors, grip­pers and motors in the process. The RPS sim­pli­fies this step and pro­vides a uni­form pro­gram­ming structure.”

Analy­sis, opti­miza­tion and remote main­te­nance with ArtiMinds LAR

To keep an eye on the plant dur­ing oper­a­tion, Primus uses ArtiMinds Learn­ing & Ana­lyt­ics for Robots (LAR) analy­sis soft­ware. On one hand, Primus uses this tool for process mon­i­tor­ing and fault detec­tion or analy­sis, on the other hand also to con­vert process sta­bil­ity into key fig­ures. “ArtiMinds LAR enables us to take a tar­geted approach to process opti­miza­tion and trou­bleshoot­ing,” says Schwier. “This elim­i­nates the need for fish­ing in the dark.” Castien also sees this as a major advan­tage: “There is always a kind of demon­stra­tion effect when trou­bleshoot­ing. Once you are stand­ing in front of the sys­tem, the error no longer occurs. With LAR, I can auto­mat­i­cally record all the data and, thanks to the seam­less doc­u­men­ta­tion, iso­late errors within a short time.” In addi­tion, opti­miza­tion poten­tial that would not be vis­i­ble to the naked eye can be eas­ily objec­ti­fied. Castien explains, “We have two robots with the same pro­gram. The analy­sis data from the LAR showed that there are still dif­fer­ences, though, and con­trary to our assump­tion, the two sys­tems don’t run the same.” Using this data, Castien was able to read­just the pre­ci­sion to within 100ths and, after a few runs, re-eval­u­ate whether or not the changes had the desired pos­i­tive effect. 

Suc­cess all along the line 

With the soft­ware solu­tions from ArtiMinds, Primus Präzi­sion­stech­nik was in a posi­tion to imple­ment that flex­i­ble robotic cell that the com­pany needed for the fully auto­mated assem­bly of the small gear­boxes. “We achieved our goal and were able to increase the process qual­ity from about 90 to almost 100 per cent,” Völz states with sat­is­fac­tion. “Fur­ther­more, the sys­tem gives us high flex­i­bil­ity since we can adapt it to new tasks or changed con­di­tions with­out much effort, i.e. repro­gram it inde­pen­dently. In addi­tion, the robotics know-how built up as part of the project pro­vides us with a major com­pet­i­tive advantage!”