News & Events

2024-09-30 Getting ready for the final demonstration

Once the DrapeCell was assembled at Baltico several updates were made to various software modules. This included the action recognition to robustly detect humans also in the new configuration of the workcell and the control system, that enables the collaborative transport of large plies. The task and motion planning, which manages the workflow was updated, making the whole process more efficient. Adaptations were also made to allow that a single operator is running the whole process, including the loading of the plies on the table. Extended tests were done with a set of representative plies of different size and shape and covering all modes of collaboration. By mid October the whole system is expected to be read to start the final evaluation runs, starting with usability experiments done by project partner AAU.

2024-08-30 DrapeCell on the road again

In August 2024 DrapeCell was once again made ready to be shipped to one of the project partners. This time the robot was going to project partner Baltico in Northern Germany. Baltico had just finished a new building with sufficient space to host the DrapeCell for the final demonstration. As soon as the concrete was had dried and was strong enough to carry the heavy workcell, it was disassembled at Profactor and sent to Baltico. A week after the whole workcell was assembled again and after and extended functional check, it was ready for the integration of the latest developments and the final evaluation. The DrapeCell will now remain at Baltico for several months up to the end of 2024.

2024-04-23 Boat-building experiments

The final demonstration of the DrapeBot project consists of building a large, composite propeller for a ship. This made it necessary to adapt the workcell. Positions for the mould and the table, where the cut pieces are presented, had to be found to ensure that the plies can be properly picked up, transported and placed. Particular emphasis was put on the collaborative transport so as to allow sufficient space for the human operator to move around. A particular challenge was the large number of 70 plies that are placed, each with slightly different shape and with sizes ranging from very small pieces up to almost 2m in length. Also, a larger variety of materials is used in this application and adaptations of the gripper were necessary. In particular needle grippers had to be added, because the suction units just could not deal with the soft and porous dry fabric. The whole arrangement of the suction heads on the gripper was investigated in detail, taking all requirements into account. Several iterations were needed until a solution was found that was suitable for all 70 plies.

2024-03-13 DrapeBot at the European Robotics Forum

The European Robotics Forum 2024 was held in Rimini from 13th to 15th of March. More than 1000 people participated in the event and DrapeBot was prominently presented there. Aside from presentations of topics related to DrapeBot in 3 workshops, project partner UNIPD also organised an exhibition of the DrapeBot technology. While it is impossible to transfer the large workcells to such an event, UNIPD had prepared a small cobot that could be safely used at the event. The robot was able to demonstrate the key features of the DrapeBot system on a mock-up draping process and it could even allow interaction with participants to show the collaborative aspects. Earlier in March, DrapeBot technologies related to the inspection of the fabric were also presented by Profactor at the JEC fair in in Paris.

2024-01-31 DrapeCell is coming home

After the demonstration on the automotive use case at Dallara was completed, a set of performance indicators were acquired and the workcell was disassembled and shipped back to Profactor. The analysis during the demonstrations indicated that the system has reached a remarkable level of robustness and even though it is a technically very complex system, the end users could operate the workcell without assistance by the developers. In order to improve the usability of the system and to enhance the efficiency of the draping process, the times spent on each step of the process were investigated in detail. It was also found that quite a bit of time can be saved in the overall process, if single process steps are done in parallel rather than in a strictly sequential manner. These improvements will be implemented in the coming months, before the workcell is shipped to the final demonstration at project partner Baltico in Germany.

2023-12-14 Complete Draping Process Demonstrated

After several months of testing and optimization an integrated demonstration was conducted at Dallara. The demonstration included the human-robot collaborative draping of five plies, showing all different interaction modes from robot-only to fully collaborative draping. The demonstration was made on the example of the front hood of the Dallara Stradale. Carbon fiber patches of different sizes had to be handled, including large patches, that could only be transported through a human-robot collaborative transport. After finishing the draping, an automatic inspection was done, including the scanning of fiber orientations and the detection of typical defects. Prior to this demonstration all software modules were updated in several iterations to improve the speed and smoothness of the human-robot collaboration. Automatic detection of ply and mould positions made the whole system robust to typical changes that may happen during the process. Additional modes of communication were added, by integrating a screen that shows the current state of the process and that helps the user to understand and predict the robot’s next actions.

2023-09-18 DrapeCell on a Trip to Italy

In September 2023 the DrapeCell which was integrated at Profactor in Steyr (Austria) was temporarily moved to Italy. Several months of tests were planned at project partner Dallara and for this purpose the DrapeCell had to be disassembled, shipped to Dallara and then re-assembled there. Due to the size of the robot and due to the weight carried by the robot, the workcell also included a massive platform with a weight of several tons. This platform was disassembled into “manageable” pieces and loaded in a truck together with the robot. A few days later it arrived in Italy, where Dallara had emptied a workshop to host the DrapeCell for the coming months. About one week after arrival the DrapeCell was back “alive” and testing could start at Dallara.

2023-05-10 DrapeBot at “Produktionstechnikkolloquium” On 10th of May DLR organized the biannual “Produktionstechnikkolloquium” in Augsburg. The event was attended by about 200 participants from research and industry. The DrapeBot project was shown at this event with a separate presentation and a demonstration in the laboratory of DLR. The demonstration was based on the integrated test done about 1 month earlier in the project, but could already show some additional features that were developed during that period.

2023-04-25 DrapeBot at JEC fair At the end of April the JEC World 2023 was held in Paris. The DrapeBot project was presented at a specific booth in Hall 5. The booth was decorated in in the DrapeBot design, a video of the recent integration tests was shown and a small robot was exhibited with the small sensor for fibre orientation measurement. The robot, which was running continuously through the duration of the whole fair attracted quite some interest. Discussions with visitors were mainly around technical aspects of collaborative draping and about the implementation in an industrial settings. The DrapeBot project was also covered in an article in the JEC News Magazine, which was distributed daily at the fair. Overall the JEC fair was a very succesful event, with 36000 visitors and lots of contacts at the DrapeBot booth, providing a good basis for future exploitation of the DrapeBot technologies.

2023-04-18 – Integrated demonstration at DLR On 18th of April the consortium met at DLR to jointly assess the status of the project. This was done in the framework of the first integrated demonstration of the draping system. DLR had set up a workcell with a Kuka robot, including the flexible gripper. Based on a 3D model of the workcell and on information taken directly from a ply book the robot motions were planned and executed automatically. The first step consisted of the measurement of the position of the cut piece before pick-up. This was done through a camera system integrated into the gripper. The robot then picked up the whole cut piece and transferred it to the mould, where it was held in place by the extendible suction heads of the gripper. The human operator then performed the draping in the high curvature areas. After finishing the suction heads were removed from the cut piece and the robot proceeded to pick up the next ply. Additional methods of interaction were also demonstrated, such as instructing the robot to take a picture of a particular position on the ply, e.g. to document a potential process deviation. Overall, key elements of the process could be successfully demonstrated. The next steps include increasing the robustness of the whole system and bringing it to a level of maturity so that it can be successfully installed and used in an operative environment at Dallara. There are still a few technical challenges, mainly aiming at increasing the smoothness of the human-robot interaction. But there is good progress and the consortium is confident to have this ready by autumn 2023, when the workcell is temporarily transferred to the production site of project partner Dallara.

Mid April 2023 – Usability experiments at Profactor From 11th to 14th of April 2023 a set of usability experiments was conducted by project partner AAU in the DrapeCell set up at Profactor. The goal of these experiments was to determine the potential benefits in terms of usability for different modes of interaction, e.g. conventional buttons vs. gestures. About 20 participants were recruited for these epxeriments and a substantial amount of data was recorded per participant, including detailed motion data. This will also provide a basis for the trust assessment algorithms to be developed in the project. The data that have been collected will now be analysed and will on the one hand be used for further developments at AAU, but will also provide guidelines on how to improve the usability of the integrated DrapeBot system.

2022-11-08 Full Integration Ready to Start In November 2022 the consortium met at CNR in Milano, Italy. This meeting marked the starting point of the integration of all the components that have been developed in the last months. The first integration aims at demonstrating the key elements of the draping process, including interaction modes such as the joint human-robot transport of material and the collaborative draping in the mould. To ensure that all partners have got exactly the same understanding of the process, the whole draping process was executed in a mock-up scenario prepared by project partner Dallara. This also helped to identify remaining details of the interfaces between the single software modules that were previously not thought of. The final hardware components of both robotic workcells are now being assembled and mounted in the workcells. The first major integration activity is scheduled for end of November and will then be followed by a series of integration tests leading up to the demonstration and evaluation in April 2023.

2022-05-18 Gripper on Display In the mid of May the consortium met at project partner Abele Ingenieure for a general meeting. At that time it was a good opportunity to take a first glimpse of the newly built gripper for handling the carbon fibre fabric. The gripper consists of the support structure and a set of four suction heads to pick up the material. Two of these smaller versions of the gripper (the large one is still under construction) will be used for the multi-robot work cell at DLR. The gripper will also be equipped with two sensors for fibre orientation that are also currently being built. During the project meeting in Augsburg several other components were presented, of which initial versions are in the process of being finished. This includes the task and motion planning, the human perception and the low-level robot control. Also the collaborative workcells at Profactor and DLR are making good progress, with first integration tests completed in April and additional ones being planned for June. Overall the project is now entering into its first integration phase, where all components will be set up in the robot work-cells to allow a first test of a collaborative draping process.

2022-05-06 DrapeBot at JEC in Paris After two years of virtual fairs and video conferences the JEC World fair took place in the “real world” in Paris from 3rd to 5th of May 2022. The DrapeBot project was prominently presented at the Profactor booth. A folder about the DrapeBot project had been prepared and about 80 interested participants visited the Profactor stand. Despite the fact that the DrapeBot project could not yet show an integrated demonstration (this is scheduled in about 1 year from now), there was already some interest in the technologies for material handling, process monitoring and particulary in the collaborative aspect of the technology. Overall the JEC World fair 2022 was a big success, with more than 1100 exhibitors and est. 40.000 participants.

2022-02-21 DrapeCell under construction In January and February 2022 construction of the DrapeCell at Profactor started. The robotic workcell includes a large ABB robot with a reach of about 3m and a payload of 200kg. The workcell had to fulfill several, partially contradicting requirements. A key element was the stability of the whole setup to make sure that the robot can move (and stop) when carrying the large gripper, which is now close to the upper limit of the allowed payload. On the other hand the robotic platform needs to be transportable so that it can be installed at Dallara and Baltico as planned later in the project. Therefore, a modular structure was chosen for the platform, which allows to disassemble it into smaller components that are manageable in terms of size and weight. The robot is mounted on a base, so that it is at a more suitable height for collaborating with the human operators and picking up large patches of material from a table. First tests have already been conducted to make sure that the robot is moving and all standard software components are working. The next step will be to integrate the required safety fence and to set up the computing hardware that will interact with the sensors for human perception, the gripper’s control unit and the robot. This will take place in the following weeks, so that a first integration test can take place in May 2022.

2021-12-15 Gripper design finished A key element of the draping process is the handling of the material. For this purpose project partner Abele designed a gripper that had to fulfill a number of constraints, such as being able to pick up a wide range of different materials without doing any damage to the sensitive fabric. Also the construction had to have sufficient flexibility to cover the use cases of the project. Two different designs were made, one for each robotic workcell. The smaller gripper with a size of about 700x800mm will be used for robot-only manipulation of the fabric. Two of these smaller grippers will be built to enable the joint transport of material by two robots. The second gripper is considerably larger with a size of 1600x800mm and will be used for the human-robot collaborative draping processes. Both grippers use a carbon frame as support structure and will include between 4 and 24 suction modules to pick up the material. Space on the gripper is also foreseen for the sensor that will monitor the position of the ply and measure the re-orientation of the fibres during the draping. Construction of the grippers is currently ongoing and the first prototypes are expected to be finished in the next few months. In parallel to this also the robotic workcells are being set up.

2021-09-29 DrapeBot at SAMPE 2021 After many months of virtual events the SAMPE conference in Switzerland was the first major opportunity to present the DrapeBot project in the real world. The presentation included a summary of the results found during the analysis of the use cases and the system concept at hardware and software level that emerged from this analysis.

2021-04-02 DrapeBot at ERF2021 DrapeBot is presented at the European Robotics Forum 2021 (ERF2021). The virtual event takes place on April 13-15. The main contents and goals of DrapeBot will be communicated in an interactive poster session.

2021-01-13 Kick-off Meeting On January 13 and 14, 2021, the kick-off meeting for the DrapeBot project takes place. Due to travel restrictions, the meeting is held online via video conferencing. Nevertheless, very fruitful discussions on the project and upcoming activities are conducted. A total of 24 people from all 9 partner organisations are present at the meeting. The consortium is highly motivated and will tackle the first activities in the project right after the end of the kick-off.

2021-01-01 Project Start First of January 2021 – the project officially starts! We are looking forward to a fruitful and interesting project. The consortium is eager to get the DrapeBot going.