PROJECTS
IK4-TEKNIKER has put its technology in the field of robotics at the service of a new system to facilitate the programming of industrial robots, one of the obstacles preventing them from being introduced into small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Basque R+D centre is leading the Easypro project, which has a budget of about half a million Euros, funded within the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme, to develop a system that will help programme industrial robots by means of a manual guidance system. The project, which started last year and which will be completed after the summer, includes the development of the guidance device as well as a 3D artificial vision system to obtain precise trajectories.
IK4-TEKNIKER, which is collaborating in this project with the robot manufacturer COMAU and the R+D centre CNR-ITIA, both Italian, is co-ordinating the project and is responsible for developing the vision system and the system to automatically generate trajectories.
The goal of the Easypro project is to make the programming of industrial robots more straightforward but without compromising accuracy features when generating trajectories. That is why it combines a device which, once fitted onto one of the axes of the robot, allows it to be guided naturally, together with the 3D vision system that allows exact trajectories to be obtained. Programming solutions of this type are of great interest in the processes in which there is no CAD of the component which enables programming to be done OFF-line, and as an alternative to the point-to-point programming for welding, laser cladding, painting, etc.
The initial versions of the solutions developed by IK4-TEKNIKER have already been completed, and the promoters of the Easypro projects are currently working to integrate and validate the results.
