INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS AND MOTION CONTROL

Many technologies inside the robotic area are permanently in transformation. One of the consequence is that the costs of a robotised plant becomes more and more affordable and that an increasing number of enterprises can invest in these industrial tools as it is shown int the economical trends.

The variety of industrial applications using robots is very large, from most simply to most complex. The most demanding and the most restricting robotic applications need sometimes to add still more complexity by adding machine vision.

One of the many particularities in robotics is that an engineer has to master many knowledge in many areas : in mechanics, in geometry, in programming ( robots controllers, PLC controllers, machine vision, MMI, high performing communication networks ), and obviously in axis control and in motion control.

You are introduced here in the basics of robotics through the Oussama KHATIB's courses and other lecture notes. The courses are displayed in standard video format ( .mp4 ) and can be downloaded. The most important topics are dealt with from history of robotics up to robot control. The main chapters are carrying on mathematics and geometry, spatial description, transformations, kinematics, joint space dynamics and control. You will also get informations such as motion planning, trajectory generation, programming, designing and many other things.

Oussama KHATIB - Stanford university

https://robotacademy.net.au

Th. HORSCH presents a clear synthesis about industrial robots with a well written introduction to mechanics and an introduction to the different kinds of motion.

The document summarizes the main mathematical methods used to describe positions and orientations with respect to a particular system in order to describe the space and its transformations. The author explains there the basic knowledge to get in forward and inverse kinematics, and how to generate a trajectory in joint space or in cartesian space, synchronously or asynchronously, with the fundamentals in spline interpolation based on Bezier curves. The end of this paper presents some considerations about the programming languages used in robotics.

Th. HORSCH - FH Darmstadt

Summer term 2000

PARALLEMIC is an information and resource centre specialized in parallel mechanics, in Stewart platforms and in parallel kinematics where you can get many data about these subjects.

• General topic reviews related to parallel mechanisms.
• Theoretical reviews related to parallel mechanisms.
• Laboratories working on parallel mechanisms.
• R & D centres working on parallel mechanisms.

• Software.
• Terminology.
• Reviews.
• Theory.

Ilian BONEV and Luc ROLLAND - www.parallemic.org

The purpose of the International Federation of Robotics is to promote research, development, use and international co-operation in the entire field of robotics to act as a focal point for organisations and governmental representatives in activities related to robotics.

Especially, the association delivers informations about the economic trends and statistics in industrial robotics worldwide for the previous years, downloadable in pdf format. You can also read an interesting document about the history of the industrial robots.

www.ifr.org

First, the European Union has noted the very creative potential and the big amount of high technology impressive results provided by small and medium European enterprises involved in the world of the robotics, these solutions covering very various usage areas.

Second, the Union has noted that many of these small companies met with difficulties to put production and marketing into concrete forms.

These facts being established, the Union decided to finance ESMERA ( European SMEs Robotics applications ), a European project which goal is to support these companies, helping them to consolidate their ideas and to boost the transfer of these ideas towards the market.

This European initiative supports these companies helping them to develop, to test and to promote their ideas, helping them to correctly estimate the potential market, helping them to build their commercial offer according to the defined market, helping them to estimate, to define, to specify and to scale the production, and finally helping them to promote their technology.

Each open call launched by this project consists in a set of robotics challenges from the point of view of the technology.

• Either end-users directly propose some robotics challenge to ESMERA, or they directly propose a challenge to an applicant who is in charge to transmit this challenge to the team.
• The challenges have to match with real-life problems that have not been - partially or fully - automated by robotics yet, and that already have a market.
• The area of the challenges is not restricted ( please see the list of the robotics challenges for each area in 2020 ).

  It could be manufacturing, food and drugs, health and care, construction, emergency responses, agriculture, logistics, energy and whatever else …

• There are not any constraint according to the hardware solutions.

  Though, applicants are strongly encouraged to develop solutions in areas such as - for instance - collaborative human-robotics, mobile platforms, modular robotics cells, automatic guided vehicles, any new innovative human-robot interface, virtual or augmented reality …

• Each applicant stands to take up one challenge by offering innovative solutions, within the limits of research and technology development activities.
• Regarding a well defined protocol, the selected SMEs develop their concepts, prove the viability of their technical solutions, develop the industrial and commercial models etc … in collaboration with a team of end-users, while getting advantages of the support proposed by this European structure.
• At the end of the call, each applicant is getting a total donation restricted to 200 000 € maximum.

History of this European project

• The project first started in 2018, January.
• The first open call ran from year 2018, August, up to year 2020, December.

  16 applicants were selected to run the phase I ; 8 applicants among them were selected to run the phase II.

• The second open call started in year 2020, May, and should finished in year 2021, December.

  20 applicants were selected to run the phase I ; 10 applicants among them are going to be selected to run the phase II.

Open call innovation cycle

• Challenges selection.

  The organization set a selection of the proposals made by end-users, the first criteria beeing that a proposal must be adequate with the robotic world.

  • The ESMERA team launches an open call to propositions of solutions towards small or medium enterprises strongly involved in research and technology development within the robotics world.
  • Simultaneously, ESMERA launches an open call to collaboration towards potential end-users, in order to operate the phase I ( concept proof ) and the phase II ( industrial and business development ) with the selected applicants.

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• Candidature.
  • The enterprises could apply as single SMEs, or as a group of maximum 10 SMEs partners.
  • These enterprises must proof a real activity in robotics research and technical development.
  • The applicants address the robotics solutions they have imagined in response to the challenge.

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• Preliminary phase.
  • Eligibility.

    Candidatures are checked and declared eligible ( or not ) to the valuation process.

  • Valuation.

    Each eligible project is checked and evaluated by a team of independent experts, according to criteria such as scientific quality, expected impact and quality of the framework.

  • Applicants selection to experiment in phase I.

    The 20 best experiments of the preliminary phase are selected. The selected applicants receive a first donation of 75 000 €, and can start to operate the experiment phase I.

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• Experiments phase I - Concept proof ( around 9 months ).

  ESMERA provides finances, technical assistance, commercial mentoring and the technical training to develop these experiments.

  • Developing and experimenting a pilot unit, proving the concept viability and the concept feasibility, in collaboration with a team of end-users.
  • Applicant selection for phase II.

    The 10 best experiments of the phase I are selected. The applicants get a second donation of 125 000 € and can start to operate the experiment phase II.

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• Experiments phase II - Business development ( industrial, marketing ; around 9 months ).
  • This phase runs with a new end-users team.
  • The experiments consist in developing economical matter, industrial matter and marketing matter, in a viable and pragmatic way. The final goal is to maximize the chances of success.

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• Finals

  The 10 finalist SMEs present their finished solutions.

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Then, the ESMERA can eventually advice the finalists in the development of their activities.

Quid of the future ?

Congratulations for this European initiative, congratulations to the complete ESMERA team, congratulations to all small and medium enterprises and to all participants.

Nevertheless, this project has been planned for only two experiment cycles ( the second is currently active ).

According to the interest of this idea, to its potential repercussions and to its long term implications, would not it be judicious it could continue in a way or another, may be even - it is not forbidden to dream yet ( … although … ) - with more ambitious objectives ?

And to take advantage of these positive results by beginning to build a strategy targetting European industrial autonomy and independence covering both technology and industry ?

ESMERA - https://vmknoll42.in.tum.de/welcome/

SYR is the first ecological robot in the world.

It is only built with recovered waste materials provided by any of us.

The goal of this project ( currently in development ) is to provide a test platform ( a real, physical robot ) reachable over internet to the enthusiasts of the robotics.

The objective is to allow them to test their new algorithms ( in control, in shape recognition, in artificial intelligence or anything else ) interactively and in real time, with a real robot.

You can join the team to help them to develop this project or by providing some waste products such as old computers, old motors and so on.

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As far as this rubric is not finished, you can visit the site of the american society for the prevention of cruelty to robots ! ( ASPCR )