Project

FROGS - Flexible and Robust Robotic Gripping Solutions able to deal with product variability

Acronym
FROGS
Code
180R9120
Duration
01 October 2020 → 30 September 2023
Funding
Private funding via IWT/VLAIO
Research disciplines
  • Engineering and technology
    • Robot manipulation and interfaces
    • Robotic systems architectures and programming
    • Sensing, estimation and actuating
Keywords
industrial robotics robotgripping robotpicking adaptive controlstrategies
 
Project description

Flexible gripping and picking are currently still critical grand challenges for robots. Classical robot applications have a dedicated gripper engineered which is typically optimized for gripping and picking one particular object. For flexible assembly and packaging applications where the properties of objects to grip change frequently or for applications with inherent object variation (e.g., organic products) a different solution is required.

To realize this, Atlas Copco, Flexpack, KUKA, Niko, Octinion, Pickit and Flanders Make join forces to research:

  • Generic Flexible gripping concepts of operation and related system architectures which exhibit robustness against Object variability in size and shape and Variability in position and/or pose of feeded objects;
  • The system architecture shall be capable to handle variety of objects with variation in size, position and shape
  • Fast control system shall be retrainable with new objects (objective: within an hour)
  • Fast design of the gripping fingers for a range of new products (objective: within a day)
  • Detection and auto correct capability for grasping of objects (objective: pose detection and correction in path planning)