Ivan Lundberg

Robot concept for scalable, flexible assembly automation: A technology study on a harmless dual-armed robot

This paper introduces a new robot concept that aims at closing the gap between a manual assembly and a fully automatic assembly. It is intended to be used for handling and assembly of small parts in a highly agile production scenario, which employs both human workers and robots in the same line, with a frequent need for reconfiguration. The development is at a stage where several prototypes leave the research lab and are being tested in pilot applications, with more work required to reach a fully agile assembly scenario. Substantial parts of the remaining research work are done in the FP7 project ROSETTA.

Safety of collaborative industrial robots: Certification possibilities for a collaborative assembly robot concept

Industrial requirements for automation of small parts assembly operations are driving technology into the direction of scalable robotic automation, suitable for operation in shared environments with human workers and exhibiting highest flexibility and ease of use. One of the challenges is developing solutions for personnel safety under these conditions. This paper discusses both the presently viable approaches to risk assessment for collaborative robots and a more detailed future methodology that will be better able to resolve the relevant low-level injury risks.

Sensorless friction-compensated passive lead-through programming for industrial robots

Industrial robots are important when the degree of automation in industry is increased. To enable the use of robots also when the products change rapidly, the programming must be quick and easy to perform. One way to accomplish this is to use lead-through programming, i.e., the user manually guides the robot. This paper presents a sensorless approach, and thus avoids the need for a typically expensive sensor. The method is based on disabling low-level joint controllers combined with gravity compensation. It is reported how the performance can be improved by compensating for friction. Further, a method for detecting small external torques is described, based on the use of the low-level joint controllers with increased integral gain. The lead-through programming is experimentally evaluated using two different industrial robots.