APPLYING ROBOTICS TO IMPROVE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY AND TO RELIEVE WORKERS OF DANGER, STRAIN AND BOREDOM
In many sectors across society, people are performing jobs that are more dangerous, more strenuous or more repetitive than we should reasonably accept. Like checking underground gas pipes, performing maintenance on sky rise buildings, inspecting space rovers, or lifting heavy objects. Robotics for industry will make the daily jobs of people involved in this kind of work more bearable, safer, healthier, and more efficient. Flying robots? Multitasking operational cognitive systems? Smart tooling with complex technologies? The Robotics Centre is where they will come to life.
Projects
Examples of robotics for industry projects:
Aerial-Core
Inspection and maintenance of infrastructures can be performed safely and more effectively with the newest aerial manipulating robotics technologies. These work from the air in close collaboration with human workers positioned safely on the ground.
Smart Tooling
Maintenance in the process industry will be safer, cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient with innovative robotic tools that do not need rest and that thrive on endless repetition.
T-Flex: a Fully Flexure-Based Hexapod
We have designed a fully flexure-based large range of motion hexapod robot. With a basis of
elastic mechanisms, it is free of friction, which makes it very predictable and allows for a better rotational range of motion in each direction.
Facilities
The facilities enabling us to bring robotics to life:
Virtual Reality Lab
The VR Lab supports decision-making in multidisciplinary design phases and helps researchers and industry partners to identify and analyse details in the physical world that are difficult to study with the naked eye.
Smart Industry Lab
Virtual representations of products can enable testing without the need to actually build physical prototypes. Changes can even be made in real-time.
Robotics and Mechatronics Lab
With a variety of robotic setups, we investigate the applicability of new robotic systems and methods in practical situations. From robotic birds to the hexapod robot, we bring them to life in the RaM Lab.
Precision Engineering Lab
Here, we develop model-based methods for the design and control of high-precision systems.
Solutions
Impacting industry for the better
Only synergy between research and business will bring to life the best robotic innovations for industry.
FlexCRAFT
Advanced robot technology could be the agro-food industry’s best answer to its current shortage of skilled personnel and its reputation for unappealing working conditions. Together with 5 universities and 14 companies, we are creating that answer, bringing Cognitive Robots for Flexible Agro Food Technology (FlexCRAFT) to life.