The project Programming Ignition for Robotic Assembly Tasks (PIRAT) is a Grand Solutions research project granted by Innovation Fund Denmark in 2019 with four partners: Danish Technological Institute, SDU Robotics, Terma A/S and Universal Robots A/S. The project addresses the technological barriers to the implementation of financially viable robotic assembly in high-mix low-volume production. The UR robot’s user interface will be improved to enable people without traditional programming skills to quickly setup robotic assembly tasks. The intuitive programming will be demonstrated in Terma’s production of low-volume high-cost products.
The vision of the project is to increase the flexibility and adaptability of robotic assembly by enabling people without traditional programming skills to do fast robot programming of high precision assembly tasks that require force-based control. This is accomplished by learning parameters of assembly primitives from kinesthetic teaching rather than directly executing a taught behavior. It is expected that the proposed approach to kinesthetic teaching will significantly improve the reliability of the generated robot programs.