Interactive Calibration and Visual Programming of Reconfigurable Robotic Workcells

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises can utilize robotic assembly solutions to improve their productivity. This is especially true if the assembly cells can be reconfigured to accommodate smaller batch sizes and flexible tasks. The Horizon 2020 project “ReconCell” aims to develop such a reconfigurable work cell. We created a Digital Twin of this reconfigurable robot cell in order to follow the Industry 4.0 approach. Users can visually model and develop different assembly processes for the digital reconfigurable robot cell, as well as execute them in simulation. To be able to transfer the simulated processes to hardware, the Digital Twin has to be consistent with the setup of the real robot cell: It needs to be thoroughly calibrated before it can be used. In this contribution, we present methods to conduct such a calibration interactively, and use the resulting consistency to conduct virtual commissioning of simulated assembly processes and transfer such processes to a physical robot cell.