Process Chain KoPro

Short Facts

  • Duration: 01.03.2022 – 28.02.2025
  • Funding Source: Bayerische Forschungsstiftung - AZ-1512-21
  • Project Partners: Fresenius Medical Care, Wittenstein SE, Uhlmann und Zacher, DE software & control, Universal Robots
  • Follow-up project to InKoMo

Short Summary

In many industrial sectors, there has been a trend away from mass production and toward “mass customization” over the past ten years. Consumers increasingly demand personalized products which results in small batch sizes during production. Human-robot collaboration (HRC) represents a promising approach to producing these small batch sizes in a semi-automated manner. The InKoMo feasibility study demonstrated that the novel combination of humans, cobots, and worker assistance systems at a single workstation can make assembly more efficient and reduce errors through predefined and controlled work steps. However, the planning effort for such a hybrid process chain is currently extremely high and requires specialist knowledge. KoPro aims to reduce this planning effort in hybrid assembly teams by using suitable algorithms at the planning level and to (partially) automate it based on existing product and process data. In addition, suitable environmental perception and bidirectional communication modalities are to enable interaction between humans, robots, and assistance systems, from which adaptive robot programs and work instructions can be derived.

Project Team

  • Prof. Dr. Jan Schmitt
  • Prof. Dr. Tobias Kaupp
  • Philipp Kranz, M.Eng.
  • Fabian Schirmer, M.Sc.