LOCOBOT · Toolkit for building low cost robot co-workers in assembly lines

The European automotive industry and their component manufacturers are facing the biggest shift in their history. The transition from combustion engines to electric drives (e-vehicle) requires pro-duction facilities that can initially deal with low and varying production volumes and can quickly be up-scaled to large numbers at need. LOCOBOT provides a solution to this problem by developing a flexible robotic assistant platform to support manual production processes and increase the produc-tivity and precision of such tasks. LOCOBOT does not only include the robot itself but also the en-gineering tools that are required for quickly building the robot, setting up its control structure and defining its tasks. Facing the demographic change, a further goal of LOCOBOT is the improvement of ergonomics in industrial production processes. A group of key players in the automotive industry, in automation components, advanced robots and engineering software will be supported by a group of excellent researchers to solve the technical and scientific challenges in LOCOBOT. The results will be demonstrated by setting up 3 typical and highly relevant use cases in a pilot production line of Audi AG. The automotive industry will benefit from LOCOBOT by having a robot assistant that can be quick-ly reconfigured in terms of its kinematic structure as well as its tasks. This allows them to make manual production processes much more efficient, to quickly up-scale a production process if re-quired and to improve working conditions by reducing the need to lift heavy objects (such as wheel hub drives for the e-vehicle). This will enable the industry to achieve a leading position in the the e-vehicle market and to keep up with the expected customer demand. The immediate impact (2-5 years) of LOCOBOT will be about 150 MEur in savings due to increased flexibility and efficiency, and will be 10 times as much in the following years depending on how the production numbers of the e-vehicle evolve.