Autonomous Composite Production by Robotic Pick & Place

Abstract

During the last decade the DLR Center of Lightweigth Production Technology (ZLP) in Augsburg investigated the potential of the autonomous production of composite parts by means of pick and place executed by industrial robots. Starting from conventional teaching the research focus was extended to the development of technology bricks for computer vision based gripping, automated derivation of grip- and drop coordinates from CAD data, digital process description and workflow, autonomous cut-piece transfer by means of collision free path planning and a multi-robot synchronization and execution layer. The technology bricks are enriched by a process data acquisition system and controlled by a manufacturing execution system embedded into a high-level process control system. In this work we give an overview of the developed technologies and achievements based upon several use cases from the field of composite production.