Flexible use of cobots: Tools for the development of adaptable collaborative test stations

Increasing fluctuations in sales markets, a growing number of variants, increasing price pressure and customised products with short-term orders: The demands placed on the inspection process for complex products are high and constantly subject to new developments. For companies, this means that testing technology must be designed to be adaptable in order to be able to quickly implement short-term changes in production processes, for example. At present, many inspection processes in industry are still carried out manually. However, they offer great potential for automation. The aim of the it's OWL research project "Cobot-supported test stations for intelligent technical systems" (CogeP) is therefore to develop a set of tools that increases the degree of automation of test stations for intelligent mechatronic systems. 

For which scenarios are manual processes suitable, and when should a partially or fully automated device be used? Which functional units should be automated? And which measures make economic sense? One approach that the research team is investigating in the project is human-robot collaboration. Together with Diebold Nixdorf Systems and the industrial software developer Verlinked, Fraunhofer IEM - responsible for the development of partial models and a digital twin - is working on two use cases with high automation potential.

Firstly, a cobot will in future take over the real money tests at Diebold Nixdorf ATMs, which are currently still carried out manually. The employees have a monitoring function and can intervene and correct errors in a targeted manner. On the other hand, a testing robot is being developed that assembly staff can use to quickly and accurately check the quality of the control panels on ATMs.

In the CoGeP project, the Fraunhofer IEM is specifically focussing on semi-automated robots: this makes it possible to exploit the advantages of automation while at the same time ensuring the adaptability of the inspection systems. Companies should be able to integrate cobot workstations into existing production processes cost-effectively and with little effort, allowing them to change their production at short notice or adapt it to small quantities through to the production of individual items. Based on a holistic system model, the IT architecture of the late