Human-machine collaboration
Kuka Innovation Award 2018 presented
Kuka has chosen an outstanding concept in the field of human-machine collaboration: The 'CoAware' team convinced the jury with its demonstration in the fields of dynamic human modeling, image processing and interaction control for robots.
All applicants had the task of developing a realistic application for the "Real-World Interaction Challenge". The focus was on the direct support of humans by the robot and the direct interaction of the robot with its environment. The automation specialist Kuka provided each of the five final teams with a 'flexFellow'. This is a flexible robot unit on which an 'LBR iiwa' from Kuka is mounted, a sensitive lightweight robot for safe human-robot collaboration. The Munich-based start-up Roboception also provided a 3D vision sensor for the finalists. The finalists had six months before the trade fair to realize their projects. Their work can now be seen at the Kuka stand at Hannover Messe 2018.
On 26 April 2018, Dr Bernd Liepert, Chief Innovation Officer at Kuka and patron of the competition, presented the prize of 20,000 euros to the best solution: in their opinion, the 'CoAware' team from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia demonstrated human-robot collaboration in the most convincing way: they showed how movements and ergonomics can be monitored and optimized in real time using a dynamic model. A hand on the gripper of the lightweight robot independently grasped objects such as a metal cylinder and fed it to a worker. The worker was then able to ergonomically process the workpiece using a polishing machine. "The idea is for robots and humans to work together and not have to avoid each other. This requires extensive data fusion - that's our biggest challenge," said one of the team members before the decision was made.
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