Recently, the Sirris experts from the Smart Assembly & Production Application Lab helped a company by developing a demonstrator to show that an idea for a new product was technically feasible and practicable.
Because of the corona crisis, the West Flanders company finally had the time it needed to work on a long-standing research question and product development. However, the company did not have the necessary infrastructure in house to carry out the experiment and therefore contacted Sirris for help.
Twofold issue
The company faced two challenges:
- the question of the maximum deviation under which a product can always be picked up with a suction cup: these data could not be provided by the suppliers and therefore had to be determined experimentally.
- Once these data could be determined with standard equipment, a demonstrator had to be developed in which a camera, software and a robot could work together.
Internal demonstator
For the experiment, Sirris brought together its knowledge and experience in image processing, robotics and the construction of a robot cell. By using the existing infrastructure in the Application Lab Smart Assembly & Production in Kortrijk, the Sirris experts managed to put the company's ideas into practice in one day. Questions could be answered around the limitations of the equipment, the task time, the integration of camera and robot, optimisation of the programming of the implementation, possible next steps and technical choices.
In this way, Sirris was able to help the company further using its technical expertise and know-how and to impart a hands-on experience in an approachable manner. The company was able to reach some important findings, which it could only find out through practice.
Do you have questions about the use of robots/cobots or automation in general that you would like to investigate, but you lack the necessary infrastructure or knowledge? Do you want to test some ideas before investing in them? Or do you want to gain hands-on experience to better understand what you are doing? Then be sure to contact us!
