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SecondHands project members present first robot prototype for warehouse maintenance work
Today the SecondHands project is presenting the first prototype of its collaborative robot (cobot) which will act as the main platform for testing and developing new technologies related to the maintenance and repair of automation equipment in Ocado’s highly automated warehouses. Ocado is a UK-based company and the world's largest online-only supermarket, delivering over 260,000 customer orders per week using a network of automated facilities called Customer Fulfilment Centers (CFCs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iogFXDWqDak SecondHands (https://secondhands.eu) is an EU-funded Horizon 2020 project aiming to design a cobot that can proactively offer support to maintenance technicians working in Ocado’s CFCs. This robot will be a second pair of hands that will assist technicians when they are in need of help. The robot will learn through observation and will augment the humans' capabilities by completing tasks that require a level of precision or physical strength that are not available to human workers. The SecondHands project combines the skills of world class researchers focusing on a real-world industrial use case to deliver: the design of a new robotic assistant a knowledge base to facilitate proactive help a high degree of human-robot interaction advanced perception skills to function in a highly dynamic industrial environment Together with its research partners École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Sapienza Università di Roma, and University College London (UCL), Ocado Technology is working to advance the technology readiness of areas such as computer vision and cognition, human-robot interaction, mechatronics, and perception and ultimately demonstrate how versatile and productive human-robot collaboration can be in practice. Here is a summary of the research contributions for each of the project partners: EPFL: human-robot physical interaction with bi-manipulation, including action skills learning KIT (H²T): Development of the ARMAR-6 robot including its entire mechatronics, software operating system and control as well as robot grasping and manipulation skills. KIT (Interactive Systems Lab, ISL): the spoken dialog management system Sapienza University of Rome: visual scene perception with human action recognition, cognitive decision making, task planning and execution with continuous monitoring UCL: computer vision techniques for 3D human pose estimation and semantic 3D reconstruction of dynamic scenes Ocado Technology: integration of researched functionality on the robot platform and evaluation in real-world demonstrations
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Ocado unveils new robotic system for picking and packing groceries
Ocado Technology, a division of Ocado - the world's largest online-only supermarket, is revealing today a new robotic system capable of picking a wide range of grocery products from the 50,000 different items available on Ocado.com. The new system uses a proprietary computer vision system designed by the Ocado Technology robotics research team to calculate grasping points for a given item without requiring a 3D model of the object to be picked. The robotic system also uses a vacuum cup as the gripping device attached to the end of an articulated arm. The arm is equipped with a pipe running to an air compressor, which is capable of lifting items regardless of their deformability and shape, as long as they are within the weight restriction and the suction cup can create an airtight seal with the item’s surface. The system is designed to be easily integrated with the pick stations present in Ocado's highly automated Customer Fulfilment Centres. These pick stations use an assembly line system where crates of products are delivered to a picking point. Once the storage crates arrive at the pick station, the job of the robot system is to transfer however many items are needed from the storage crates into the delivery crates destined for the customer. The video below shows a concept design of a robot-based pick station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amOQGc-Cxyo More information on how the system works can be found in the blog article below: https://ocadotechnology.com/blog/experimenting-with-robots-for-grocery-picking-and-packing/ In addition to developing in-house robotic solutions for Ocado, the Ocado Technology robotics research team is participating in two EU-funded Horizon 2020 research projects: SoMa (http://soma-project.eu, https://youtu.be/wkE9pSWNwCg) and SecondHands (https://secondhands.eu) which aim to introduce a new suite of robotic grippers and grasping strategies.
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Universal Robots CTO, Esben Østergaard Visiting Korea Commemoration Press Conference
For commemorating CTO Esben Østergaard’s participation at the keynote of Robot World 2016 that was held on October 12, Universal Robots opened press conference at Grand InterContinental Hotel Seoul on October 13. At the keynote of Robot World 2016, Esben Østergaard defined, “Collaborative robots are assistants that bring much greater synergy effects by working with humans, rather than the threats that take humans’ jobs away.” He showed positive thoughts about change of our lives and jobs that collaborative robots will bring by saying, “By collaborative robots working dangerous or monotonous repeated works instead of humans, the original workers would take charge of more creative work. As a result, the improvement of production and effective task arrangement become possible.” ▲ As the industrial robots are deeply involved in automobile and electronic industry, Korea is globally primacy market. At the press conference, Esben Østergaard presented Universal Robots’ outstanding safety system and high technology, and introduced about its recently released ‘Universal Robots+’. He commented, “Universal Robots’ collaborative robots are certified from TÜV SÜD for applications in cleanroom environments.” And, “With this as a momentum, it is now able to inform Universal Robots’ user-friendly collaborative robots with reasonable price to various fields of industries, which include cleanroom environments such as laboratory, medicine and pharmacy field, food business, or semiconductor industry.” In compliance with the industrial norm ISO 14644-1, Universal Robots’ UR3, UR5 and UR10 are now authorized for the use in cleanroom environments of the cleanroom class ISO 5. Also, the controller box has received authorization for cleanroom ISO 6. On the official website, Universal Robots recently opened UR Academy which includes both Universal Robots+ and free e-learning module. Universal Robots+ is an online showroom that introduces End-effectors, which is developed for external developers to be optimized to the collaborative robots and perfectly operate them, software, peripherals and accessories, and helps Universal Robots’ integrators, distributors and customers use a robot as soon as they install it. Also, in UR Academy, which offers free basic program training, it is possible to learn the addition of End-effectors, I/O connection for communication with external device and safety area installation. Meanwhile, Universal Robots newly established its branch in Northeast to keep up with the increasing demand of Asia market. Tsuyoshi Yamane took the position of General Manager of Universal Robots NEA. In Universal Robots NEA, Korean, Japanese, and Taiwan branch are included, and its plan is to communicate with local market, partners and Universal Robots’ customers, at the closer position. ▲ Universal Robots didn’t hide its ambition to be the standard itself in ‘robot arm.’
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