Although the use of articulated robots and AGVs is common in many industrial sectors such as automotive or aeronautics, the use of mobile manipulators is not widespread nowadays. Even so, the majority of applications separate the navigation and manipulation tasks, avoiding simultaneous movements of the platform and arm. The capability to use mobile manipulators to perform operations on moving objects would open the door to new applications such as the riveting or screwing of parts transported by conveyor belts or AGVs. This paper presents a novel position-based visual servoing (PBVS) architecture for mobile manipulators for precise industrial operations on moving parts. The proposed architecture includes a state machine to guide the process through the different phases of the task to ensure its correct execution. The approach has been validated in an industrial environment for screw-fastening operations, obtaining promising results and metrics.

Wire harness manufacturing in the aeronautic sector is highly manual work, with production defined by multiple references and small batches. Although complete automation of the production process is not feasible, a robot-assisted approach could increase the efficiency of the existing production means. This paper presents a novel dual-arm robotic solution for workbench configuration and cable routing during the initial steps of wire harness manufacturing. Based on the CAD information of the wire harness, the proposed framework generates trajectories in real-time to complete the initial manufacturing tasks, dividing automatically the whole job between both robots. The presented approach has been validated in a production environment using different wire harness references, obtaining promising results and metrics.

The automotive industry is one of the most automatized industries, employing more than one million robots worldwide. Although several steps in car production are completely automated, many steps are still carried out by operators, especially in tasks requiring high dexterity. Additionally, customization and deployability are still pending issues in this industry, where a real collaboration between robots and operators would increase the reconfigurability of the assembly lines. This paper presents an innovative robotic cell focused on the motor and gearbox assembly, including collaborative industrial robots and autonomous mobile manipulators along the different assembly stations. The design also incorporates a human-centered approach, with an enhanced human interface to facilitate the interaction with operators with the complete robotic cell. The proposed approach has been deployed and validated on a real automotive industrial scenario, obtaining promising metrics and results.

This study addresses the challenges of Programming by Demonstration (PbD) in the context of collaborative robots, focusing on the need to provide additional degrees of programming without hindering the user's ability to demonstrate trajectories. PbD enables an intuitive programming of robots through demonstrations, allowing non-expert users to teach robot skills without coding. The two main PbD modalities, observational and kinesthetic, have limitations when it comes to programming the diverse functionalities offered by modern collaborative robots. To overcome these limitations, the study proposes the use of a wearable human-robot interface based on surface Electromyography (sEMG) to measure the forearm's muscle co-contraction level, enabling additional programming inputs through hand stiffening level modulations without interfering with voluntary movements. Vibrotactile feedback enhances the operator's understanding of the additional programming inputs during PbD tasks. The proposed approach is demonstrated through experiments involving a collaborative robot performing an industrial wiring task. The results showcase the effectiveness and intuitiveness of the interface, allowing simultaneous programming of robot compliance and gripper grasping. The framework, applicable to both teleoperation and kinesthetic teaching, demonstrated effectively in an industrial wiring task with a 100% success rate over the group of subjects. Furthermore, the presence of vibortactile feedback showed an average decrease of programming errors of 33%, and statistical analyses confirmed the subjects' ability to correctly modulate co-contraction levels. This innovative framework augments programming by demonstration by integrating neuromuscular interfacing and introducing structured programming logics, providing an intuitive human-robot interaction for programming both gripper and compliance in teleoperation and kinesthetic teaching.