AI-assisted operators
AI-assisted operators
To meet the demand for individually customised products, there is a need for reconfigurable production systems where humans and robots work closely together. For such a hybrid work cell, operators need individual support in performing the assembly task to deal with increased product variability and complexity. Digital work instructions and collaborative robots can provide a solution here. A great example where artificial intelligence is enabled to analyse speech and make a collaborative system more interactive can be found in the video below.
Such systems rely heavily on visual information, with the workplace usually perceived from above via 2D or 3D vision systems. Several techniques can then be applied:
- Ad-hoc algorithms for observing objects in predefined locations
- Recognising objects and determining their position and orientation from video images
- Determining the state of the working environment and the product to be built in a 3-dimensional representation such as a point cloud, and determining similarities or discrepancies with predefined 3D models.
A lot of these techniques are also relevant to this COOCK project, and the project sections on metrology and artificial intelligence will further illustrate such techniques.