INESCOP becomes the European hub of robotics for a day
The European project SoftManBot gathers in Elda more than 50 experts in technology, robotics and automation after three years of research. This project, which is part of the Horizon 2020 programme, is working on an innovative robotic system for handling deformable and flexible materials used in the manufacture of footwear, toys, textiles and tyres.
Obtaining robotic solutions applicable to traditional industries such as these, which handle very diverse objects, both in size and thickness, and which are also known for being flexible and deformable, "is not an easy task", says Mª Dolores Fabregat, head of the Automation and Robotics department at INESCOP. SoftManBot has been a technological challenge, "we are faced with a number of very different materials to manufacture a very wide range of products", explains the researcher.
Many operations with deformable products are currently carried out manually by operators. This is the case of extracting injected soles from their mould, a task which, among other things, has the disadvantage that it can cause short and long-term injuries to operators due to the continuous repetition of movements and the strength required to perform it.
Through the technological innovation proposed by SoftManBot “we seek to protect the health of the worker, freeing them from repetitive tasks that require a lot of strength and at the same time improving the technological level of the workplace, as the operator becomes the supervisor of the robotic system, reaching a level of automation of the process that makes it more productive, efficient and sustainable,” points out the head of Robotics at INESCOP.
At present, the project partners, Plastinher Urban (outsoles), Juema (dolls), Decathlon (cyclists' garments) and Michelin (tyres), are carrying out pilot tests at their facilities with the different robotic cells developed in the project. In fact, the partners have visited the Plastinher Urban facilities, where the prototype of the robotic cell developed for the automated extraction of soles from injection moulds has just been installed. "We have developed a combined system of artificial vision and collaborative robotics that allows the extraction of the soles thanks to the trajectories learned from the way expert operators work on the task," explains Fabregat.
In addition to INESCOP and CA-INP, Clermont Auvergne - project coordinator -, the meeting was attended by the Technological Institute for Children’s Products and Leisure - AIJU (Spain), Sorbonne University (France), the Italian technology company STAM, Decathlon, Michelin, Plastinher Urban, Juema, the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the German technology group ZIMMER.
The SoftManbot meeting in Spain will continue tomorrow, Friday, at AIJU's facilities. The second day will focus on the work developed in the toy sector, thanks to the support of the Technological Institute for Children’s Products and Leisure and Juema as industrial partner, thus the meeting will be held in Onil and Ibi.
