The main progress that the project intends so make, is to demonstrate that human-robot collaborative draping can be done in an efficient end economically feasible way. It will thus provide an important alternative to robot-only draping and human-only draping. It will fill a gap in the technological methods for draping and lay-up processes, by providing a human-centered method for draping. To facilitate this step forward the project will develop:
* Automated task and motion planning methods for human-robot collaborative processes
* New grippers, including instrumentation for monitoring of the draping process
* Human perception, action recognition and prediction to enable a smooth interaction between the robot and the human
* Low-level, real-time control methods based on model predictive control to facilitate efficient human-robot collaboration during complex tasks such as collaborative transport of larger material patches
* Live trust estimation that assesses the interaction between the human and the robot, to make the interaction more natural.
All of these elements will be integrated in two robotic workcells, which will then demonstrate a substantial impact on draping processes.
* DrapeBot will increase the potential for robotics in lay-up processes. Medium-size parts, for which collaborative draping is a technically and economically interesting approach, are still the a significant fraction of all parts. An analysis of the market indicates that there is a potential of 20.000 installations of robots for such tasks.
* The deployment risks of collaborative robotic systems will be reduced through the demonstrations in different application scenarios. These demonstrations and evaluations will include long-term tests in realistic environments of production lines for a total of 12 months in the project.
* DrapeBot will promote the use of robots in areas, where they are rarely used today. Aside from the draping process, the demonstration of large scale robots (payload 200kg, reach 3m) in a collaborative scenario will facilitate human-robot collaborations in many other areas, where larger robots are used.
* With its focus on efficiency, the DrapeBot project will provide important input to standards development, especially in the area of robotic safety, which is currently hampering the installation of large scale collaborative robotic workcells.
