Robots are widely used in industry as they improve productivity and reduce operating costs and time. They ease several tasks, such as assembly, object management, and quality control. Robots can even work in a team with humans to perform collaborative tasks.

Our research group is currently involved in two large research projects with the aim of leveraging robots in industrial settings. One project consists of enabling human-robot cooperation in the manufacturing industry. The second project involves leveraging hybrid cloud computing when using robots in the industry to maximize robots’ performance by improving/reducing robots’ local computation.

Human-Robot Collaboration: Interactive Manipulation for Industrial Robotics

Project Overview

This project aims to enable high-speed, high-precision assembly of small parts with off-the-shelf industrial robots in high-mix, low-volume production lines. We look to develop new planning algorithms and human-robot collaboration strategies so that humans and industrial robots can safely interact and collaborate when manipulating and assembling industrial components and other objects.

Support Info

This work was part of a large, multi-year, interactive manipulation project for an industrial robotics application and was part of the $100M Center for Networked Intelligent Components and Environments (C-NICE) within the Grainger College of Engineering at Illinois. Our team came from the Illinois Robotics Group which spans seven departments at Illinois and was supported by the Center for Autonomy in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. While all team members were involved in all aspects of the project, the Parasol group was focusing on multi-robot motion planning and task allocation in mobile manipulation tasks.

Publications

Updated: