High-capacity industrial robotic manipulator, open architecture, interoperable and reconfigurable.

Industrial robotics has always had a great presence in Euskadi, but there is no long-term project for the manufacture of industrial robots by companies in our environment. For some years now, Basque companies have been recognizing the role that robotic solutions can play in an environment in which the high degree of specificity in manufacturing increasingly demands more complex solutions. Today, a large part of integrating companies incorporate quality inspection processes in their production lines, however, the use of these technologies is used in a dissociated way. On the one hand, the automation of the manufacturing process suffers from the limitations of equipment whose know-how is jealously closed by the manufacturer and on the other hand, inspection systems are not used (in general) to reprogram the actions of the robots on the parts or products inspected. In a more flexible environment, the inspection system, composed for example of one or several cameras, can also be used to reprogram the trajectories of a robot and control the operation, thus minimizing the number of production lines necessary and minimizing the number of discarded resources. This type of robot programming is known as visual control or visual servoing and is a classic concept in the field of robotics. However, today, the control of the articulated arm in real time through an external system cannot be implemented in an agile and flexible way in a commercial industrial robot. The solution presented by this equipment allows you to carry out this type of actions, in addition to the routine operations carried out by any other robot. Above all, this equipment has an IP64 certification and all its mechanical and electrical elements, including motors, as well as its processing unit, can be exchanged for equivalent devices from any other supplier. In short, the equipment allows for industrial use, reconfigurable, flexible and adaptable to the needs of the production line.

This asset is an open industrial facility where the result of scientific progress can be experimented, integrated and transferred without the technological barriers inherent to a product supplied by the usual robot manufacturers. From the perspective of advanced manufacturing, where it is especially important relevance of robotics as an indispensable instrument to face the challenge of promoting intensive and sustainable manufacturing, it is essential to have an open and flexible test bench. The development of an in-house team whose architecture and programming is open to all the driving agents of these technologies, allows for the implementation of initiatives and ideas developed by those who need to transfer their ideas to industrial equipment. Until now, the lack of unique equipment of these characteristics has been an impediment in projects focused on flexible robotics and advanced manufacturing. Oriented to: All agents involved in robotics/flexible automation and advanced manufacturing that require open, industrial and modifiable equipment.