The factory of the future will be characterised by increasing interaction between robots and human workers. Researchers at the Swedish KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in collaboration with partners of the EU-funded SYMBIO-TIC project, optimise this interaction to shape a safe and friendly work environment where robots will assist and support human workers side by side. The differences in gender, age, physical conditions and skills of workers are disappearing, as everyone can do the same job well through human-robot collaboration and in-situ decision support.

What is the innovation

The key technologies developed by the team within the EU-funded project is a symbiotic active collision avoidance system that uses depth cameras and 3D models to monitor and detect any potential collisions between humans and robots, and control the robots actively in real time to avoid a collision. In addition, a multi-modal communication/control method is developed to control robots without robot programming.

About the Innovator

KTH Royal Institute of Technology is the largest technical university in Sweden. The Department of Production Engineering is the home of Sustainable Production Systems team participating in this project. The team has more than 18 years of experience in multi-national research projects in process planning, control, and more recently in human-robot collaboration. The team is also working on online real-time monitoring, off-site machining, web-based remote assembly, tracking and diagnosis of manufacturing resources.

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Out of the lab – Into the Market

The three demonstrators of the project in food packaging, aeronautic component assembly and automotive engine assembly will be the important showcases for us to bring innovation out of the lab. The three industrial partners of the demonstrators will apply the technologies in own production as the first step.

Benefits of participation in the Framework Programme

Horizon 2020 gave us the possibility and collaboration platform to work with other 14 partners from 7 European countries to address the industrial needs that are too complex for any single partner to solve. By working together in one consortium, expertise/efforts have been applied to problems solving, collectively.

For more information on EU-funded SYMBIO-TIC, visit: http://www.symbio-tic.eu/