human machine interaction

Ensuring healthy, safe and competitive work is a major challenge in industrial production particularly regarding the demographic change in Germany. Especially work systems with a high amount of manual tasks require appropriate solutions. The article discusses the potential of hybrid human-robot work systems in manufacturing focusing assembly tasks.

In the field of automobile production, automation has been implemented since the nineteen-seventies. In logistics, however, robotics has only been used to automate logistics processes with low complexity. These include processes with a high repetition rate and a highly standardized goods portfolio. In cooperation with EASY-ROB, BIBA has developed a new strategy for an intuitive programming of robotics that might be used to fulfill rather complex tasks. The operator defines the process type and important parameters via a common tracking system. Based on this data, a simulation tool calculates the movement of the robot and executes a collision control. Finally, the simulation tool generates the corresponding machine code and the robot starts its process. The intuitive programming excels at a favorably cost-benefit ratio. A demonstrator, focusing on the unloading of pallets has been presented on the CeMAT 2011. After a very brief introduction, interested visitors were able to operate the ...