Soenke Kock

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.

A flexible robotic gripper for automation of assembly tasks: A technology study on a gripper for operation in shared human environments

This paper introduces a new gripper concept that is a cornerstone of an investigation how to close the gap between manual assembly and a fully automatic assembly. The proposed gripper is required to handle a wide range of parts that are today assembled manually. The solution needs to be easy to adapt to meet new product variant requirements for low batch production. The solution further aims to achieve a harmless gripping device to operate in shared human environments. To date, prototypes have been built to validate their functionality, and recently completed lifetime tests on key sub-systems have demonstrated their robustness. A number of third generation prototypes have been built and are currently used in pilot application testing. We expect important learnings from applying the prototypes in a production environment.