Background
This robotics project was funded through an ARM Institute Directed Project Call with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Directed Projects provide another method for the ARM Institute to fund projects, enable ARM Institute Members to build relationships with the Department of Defense (DoD), and facilitate collaboration between the DoD and non-traditional collaborators. These projects also outline use cases for industry, creating dual impact.
Objective
Agile task planning is the critical limiting factor for integrating robotics into low-volume, high-variability manufacturing and sustainment environments which are essential to the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) mission. A substantial gap exists for more difficult geometries, which as of now, must be programmed by a human expert. Current state-of-the-art practices are limited to path planning, when what is needed is results-focused process planning based on the manufacturing objective.
This project aims to develop an augmented reality environment, coupled with a robotic spray coating system to demonstrate human-in-the-loop planning to achieve desirable process results.
Impact
This project aims to greatly reduce the laborious hand-programming of robots to accomplish topology-based AI manufacturing processes for geometrically complex parts, which often results in relying on manual touch labor.
The impact potential is substantial considering that there are many robot that are currently programmed manually to perform operations like wet and dry blasting and shot peening. Geometrically complex parts account for much of this workload, and lead-time for new part programs have been documented to take days to even months in extreme cases.
Project Team
Ohio State University