Low Cost Automation in everyday teaching

GLW Velbert training workshop

Falling numbers of applicants for university places and apprenticeships are facing an increasing shortage of skilled labour. The metal and electrical industry is facing new challenges. For the GLW Velbert training centre near Essen, it is clear that the time has come for young people to perceive professions in this sector as more attractive again. For this reason, the centre has purchased three transparent robot cells and ReBeL® cobots for its training workshop. Young people are particularly enthusiastic about the ease of use of the ReBeL, as GLW trainer Tobias Tielsch emphasises. "Many are amazed when we hand them a Playstation controller with which they can control the robot. They achieve immediate success."

HTBLuVA Salzburg
What sounds like science fiction was realised by students at the Höhere Technische Bundeslehr- und Versuchsanstalt Salzburg as part of their diploma thesis. They developed a mobile robot system with a gripping hand that can be controlled intuitively using gestures. This is made possible by a glove that uses sensors to translate the user's gestures into movements for the robot and its gripper. This allows the robot to perform handling tasks remotely. This prototype for teleoperation demonstrates how such a system can be realised. The students rely on a PLC from B&R for the control system. A robolink® from igus® serves as the robot arm.

Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women
Automation is a global topic and so robotics is also taught at the Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women in Bhimavaram (India) with several robolink® robot arms. The igus® Robot Control was particularly praised, and was used to programme pick & place solutions, among other things. Finally, an LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) was integrated, which recognises colours. Further product sorting was carried out on this basis.

Rüti Vocational School, Switzerland
The vocational school in Rüti has replaced its ageing robots with modern technology. Seven robolink® DPs, two of which have a linear axis, are now in use in the training lab. The students learn, for example, how to use the robots to stock a CNC machine and automate the transport of parts using pick & place processes.

KIT Karlsruhe
As part of a research project, it was investigated how two robots can be used to increase the speed of a sequence and how the forces of two robots can be combined to generate a short-term increase in force. Particular attention had to be paid to the synchronised execution of the robots.
Work was carried out with two robolink® RL-DP 5 robots, which were able to perform more complex tasks together thanks to the "cooperation" and are significantly cheaper than a similarly powerful industrial robot.

University of Bonn
In collaboration with the University of Bonn and Automated Intelligent Systems, a humanoid open-source robot was developed in 2014.
The robot, which was developed for educational and research purposes, is based on ROS.
The robot celebrated great success at RoboCup, winning the first RoboCup Design Award in 2015 and winning in several categories in 2016 and 2017. It was also honoured with the first International Harting Open Source Award in 2016. All of the robot's individual parts were produced by igus® using a 3D printer.

FH Bielefeld
An extraordinary bachelor's thesis was realised at the FH Bielefeld with the help of a igus® robolink® RL-DP.
An automated 3D four in a row. After a lot of planning, manual labour and programming trade show, the first draft was ready. A lot of testing and changes had to be made before it worked perfectly. 
The robot was equipped with a suction gripper and brings the pieces into the correct position.

A model factory developed by FH Aachen
A igus® room linear robot was selected for the application to enable practical realisation and an industry-relevant training process. An open-source webshop solution was used for data management and the diagram of the business processes. A suitable adapter and extension of the services resulted in an Industry 4.0-compatible application that implements the entire process from warehousing, ordering and financial services through to production in a client-capable manner. Only tried-and-tested protocols are used for communication. Hierarchical communication was also consistently realised at the production level, which distinguishes between real-time and non-real-time and complies with the relevant IT security standards.

Model factory on a scale of 1:18
In the training workshop of Volkswagen AG in Wolfsburg, trainees from various departments are working on the simulation of a vehicle delivery of the VW Golf on a scale of 1:18.

The "Smart Factory", consisting of twelve individual stations, results in two parallel production lines when pushed together. The production of the VW Golf is simulated, starting at the press shop, through the body shop, paint shop, marriage, assembly and vehicle delivery.

The guidance was designed with drylin®  WR10 housing bearings running on WS-10 single rails. The motion was driven Apiro® by a rack and pinion gearbox and controlled by a NEMA17 stepper motor. The factory simulation project was successfully realised using a D1 motor controller.