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Do robots take jobs?

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Home › Projects › iWired: Intelligent Wire Harness Robotically Assembled

iWired: Intelligent Wire Harness Robotically Assembled

Background

This project was selected as an ARM Institute Quick Start Project. This means the project was selected from the proposal to create the ARM Institute, rather than a traditional Project Call.

Wire harness assembly is a frequent and critical task across a range of modern aerospace production plants operations. Aerospace wire harness complexity and high variability lead to unpredictable and varying production volumes. Assembly and testing processes are currently very labor intensive, thus tedious for humans to execute, and prone to consistency and reliability issues. Required minimization of quality losses impacting high-cost components necessitated the pursuit of improvements that can be gained from automation.

Objective

Improve quality and performance by increasing the automation of wire harness assembly

Technical Approach

This project centered on the design, development, and testing of a perception-aided collaborative robotic solution for manipulating a wide variety of small and flexible parts.

  • Use perception-enabled collaborative robotics with dexterous manipulation for the wire pinning processes of harness assembly
  • Design, develop, and test a perception-aided collaborative robotic solution for manipulating a variety of small and flexible parts (wires, pins, heat shrink tubing)
  • Improve manufacturing outcomes for assembly and testing of wire harnesses via increased automation assembly steps

Participants

United Technologies Research Center (Principal Investigator), ABB, University of Connecticut

Project Type

Technology

Artificial Intelligence

Inspection

Path Planning

Year Completed

2020

Project Team

ABB

University of Connecticut

Principle Investigator

United Technologies Research Center

ARM Institute

The ARM Institute is a Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII) funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and is part of the Manufacturing USA® network.

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