Manual and automated production lines must evolve to “produce more and diverse with less”, while addressing important shortcomings such as product variabilities, lack of high-level autonomous reasoning and accurate adaptable control and holistic efficient planning systems. SMARTHANDLE will research technologies to address these needs and support European industry, by implementing:
- intelligent agents providing dexterity for handling applications,
- AI based reasoning enablers
- Higher-level planning and coordination mechanism for successful deployment in real life use cases.
To demonstrate SMARTHANDLE solutions in real-life applications, 3 use cases have been designed from the field of consumer goods requiring delicate and high precision handling (contact lenses), Metal Industries, packaging of large variable section materials (aluminium) and automotive tier-1 suppliers, disassembly of complex products (batteries) involving dexterous operations that are not possible to implement with the existing technologies.
SSH aspects will be addressed, demonstrating benefits for workers by reducing their involvement in unsafe and unhealthy tasks, improving their working conditions when working in areas where the SMARTHANDLE reconfigurable solutions will operate.