Industrial Robot & Manufacturing Automation

The process of taping (covering objects with masking tapes) before conducting surface treatments (such as plasma spraying and painting) is tedious and arduous.  This project aims to do surface covering process using masking tapes with the introduction of an automatic robotic system and corresponding software algorithm. Researchers will delve into the design of the automatic system working with a robot manipulator, a rotating platform, a 3D scanner and specific taping end-effectors for this process. The taping process requires correct tape orientation and proper contact to attach the masking tape to the surface. Meanwhile, the taping path intending to cover the region of interests is introduced. In such taping solutions, the taping tool and the taping software can be combined to form a very useful taping package for the taping related industrial process such as plasma spraying, surface protection. Such taping solutions comprising of taping tool and taping software combined to form taping packages, can be commercialised for robot taping. [read more...]

This project aims to develop a Robot Application Development and Operating Environment (RADOE). RADOE is developed based on ROS and it is an incorporation of high-level robotic software that has been developed in the A*STAR industrial robotics program for diversified robotics application development. RADOE is typically meant for industrial robots used in manufacturing sector but can be used for other robotic applications. It has a user-extensible software library and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for users to use to build applications. [read more...]

Implementing human like performance in industrial applications is a challenging task. This project aims to develop a novel tool to capture the relationship between a grinding tool and the work piece for future robotic implementation. [read more...]

The technology of producing robot manipulators as well as the advancement of motion planning algorithms enables many industries to be automated. This particularly leads to increased global productivity. However, there are still rooms for improvement in order to fully automate some complex tasks such as manipulation tasks. As time of task execution is a determining factor in industrial productivity, the planned motions need to be fast and dynamically feasible. Researchers aim to tackle the problem of complex manipulation tasks such as fine assembly, by taking dynamics constraints into consideration. [read more...]

Fine assembly tasks (e.g. in the electronics, shoes, food industries) are still out of the reach of today’s industrial robots. The main challenges lie in the unstructured environments, the soft/fragile materials of the parts to be assembled and the difficulty in controlling contact interactions. [read more...]