Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML
How can people and robots interact safely in the workplace? To answer this question, Fraunhofer IML researchers and their European partners are working on a research project that investigates how humans and robots collaborate in the context of production. It seems that machine learning technology could be a key part of the solution.
What do you associate with the word “Felice”? For most people, this pretty Italian name brings to mind a child’s smile, the first hint of sunlight after a long winter or a gentle breeze sweeping across the plains of Tuscany on a warm summer’s day. For researchers, however, this melodic name has taken on a more functional purpose – they use it to refer to the EU research project “Flexible Assembly Manufacturing with Human-Robot Collaboration and Digital Twin Models” (FELICE). In this project, Fraunhofer IML is working with partners to study human–robot collaboration in production. The aim is to increase agility and productivity in manual assembly production systems, while also ensuring safety and improving factory workers’ wellbeing. To do this, the researchers are looking for technologies that combine human cognitive abilities with robotic accuracy and endurance, and working to develop them further. One area of the researchers’ focus is the physical ergonomics that employees experience. Through a combination of various data sources such as wearables, BCIs and camera systems, the team is working to create a “digital twin” of the entire working environment. Using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods, the researchers adapt the robots’ behavior to the people interacting with them. The planned project outcomes include adaptive workstations and a robot with a gripper arm used specifically to work together with the people on the assembly lines, whenever and wherever it can best support the production process. The goal is to use AI to gradually hand over tasks that require cognition to the robots.
