The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and Aarhus University (AU) are looking for companies to participate in the innovation project ASCERTAIN, which aims to develop a physical emulator to enable human-robot collaboration emulations in a risk-controlled environment.
Nowadays, robots are getting closer to people and human operators and this is why the safety of cobots (collision, impact or crush) has been extensively discussed in the industry. However, human-robot collaborative systems (HR) have not been addressed in the same way, which might be the main reason that such HR collaborative systems have not been employed widely in the industry. Doing physical experiments at this point might be too risky (e.g.: heavy objects landing on operators), but developing a physical emulator in a risk-controlled environment could be the first step towards building human-robot collaborative systems.
Emulating the human robot co-lift
ASCERTAIN aims to develop a physical emulator to enable human-robot collaboration emulations in a risk-controlled environment. This is done by utilising cobot technology, eXtended Reality (XR) and haptics technology to create artificial and virtual environments to emulate human-robot interaction tasks, where the human operator feels as if he/she is co-manipulating or tele-manipulating objects with a virtual cobot, e.g., human-robot co-lifting.
Currently looking for companies
To this is end the project is looking for companies to participate (see contact info below):
- Two to three XR software companies – e.g., Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) developers and integrators in industrial training, maintenance and inspection, healthcare, entertainment and education areas to provide insights on the potential applications of the physical emulator.
- Two to three robot companies, e.g., cobot manufacturers and technology providers using cobots, and system integrators and end users with cobots implemented, to provide practical use cases for the two demonstrators.
Expected Results
The results from ASCERTAIN will be a TRL4 demonstration that will serve as a proof-of-concept for the grant application. A collaboration on such a large project proposal(s) can be expected by future partners in 2021. The technology will require further investigation and the increase of TRL and and they expect to commercialise the technology’s services in four years – at the earliest. This will be done by transfering technology from academia and GTS to private companies and sharing knowledge with the general public as well as wider stakeholders.
More about the ASCERTAIN project
Learn more about the ASCERTAIN project here
Timeline
The project will run from 1 February 2021 – 31 July 2022.
Contact
- Cheng Fang, Coordinator at SDU @: chfa@mmmi.sdu.dk
- Francesco Chinello, project partner at AU @: chinello@btech.au.dk