TOURINGS
Innovative Training Solution for the Installation of Collaborative Robotics in Manufacturing Sectors
About TOURINGS
The EU project TOURINGS is based on a transdisciplinary Strategic Partnership composed by a National Standardisation body, Higher Education institutions, Vocational Education and Training institutions and research centres on Smart Manufacturing, high-performance production and innovation in engineering. Each of the partners will provide their knowledge and expertise related to Collaborative Robotics, manufacturing, project management, ergonomics assessment, assembly line balance and digital simulations, aligned to the ISO-TS 15066 and taking into account problems such as work-related musculoskeletal disorders.
A collaborative robot (so-called cobot) is designed for direct human interaction in a defined collaborative space. Their integration in the industry allows to automate non-ergonomic or repetitive tasks:
It improves assembly times, to make automation flexible for changing environments and automates work in restricted areas, a set of advantages which makes it very useful for manufacturing sectors.
Only ISO-TS 15066 regulates cobots [2], complementing two existing type C standards on industrial robots (UNE 10218-A and 10218-2). This standard is key in terms of risk assessment and design of safety features considering contact situations and different collaborative methods like safety-rated monitored stop, hand guiding, speed and separation monitoring or power and force limiting.
European workforce is ageing and repetitive and non-ergonomic tasks are one of the main concerns of European healthcare due to WMSDs. Cobots enhance workers well-being and improves employment conditions and the efficiency of some tasks. This is a key point considering the competition that European manufacturing sector has to face with more automatized countries like China or Japan and other emerging countries with a younger and cheaper workforce
Under this context, different training topics are targeted in the project TOURINGS:
- Cobots installation and workstation design
- hardware, software and cells design,
- functionalities design, assembly line balance
- ergonomics assessment of human-robot interaction.
TOURINGS aims to foster the installation of cobots aligned with ISO-TS 15066 across EU to improve workers’ wellness by avoiding work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), improve the design of cobots behaviours by its modularity and improve the knowledge on the assembly line principles.
The training course shall consist of the following modules:
- Collaborative Robotics Basics: It will include all the pertinent aspects related to mechanics, electronics, computer science, artificial intelligence, control engineering and physics among others.
- Collaborative Robotics Modular Design and Behaviour: It will show the possibilities of modularity and re-programmability of Collaborative Robotics’ functionalities and different robotic cells
- Collaborative Robotics Safety Requirements: It will cover all the relative aspects related to a safe physical human-robot interaction aligned to the requirements of ISO 15066
- Collaborative Robotics Installation on the Assembly Line: It will introduce the learners in some Assembly Line and Manufacturing principles to take into account before installing Collaborative Robotics to the make the most of it
- Collaborative Robotics Interactions. Digital Human Model, Digital Human Simulation and the RULA Method: this module will show how a digital human model can be created to measure physical human-robot interaction using different methods.
The Course will be addressed to manufacturing companies along EU with special attention to those sectors where workers have more repetitive tasks, with heavy loads in non-ergonomic positions. It is also addressed to human resources managers, policy makers, VET providers, training organisations and trainers and Higher Education Institution specialized in robotics, consultancies offering specialized support for robotics installations and assembly lines balance and students and unemployed interested in collaborative robotics.
Sources:
[1] ifr.org/downloads/press2018/Executive%20Summary%20WR%2019%20Industrial%20Robots.pdf
[2] data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS
Status
Ongoing project 09/2020 — 08/2023
Contact
Project manager
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Wurll
Phone: +49 (0)721 925-1913
christian.wurll@h-ka.de
Project consortium
Network coordinator
Partners
Partners
This project is funded by
The TOURINGS project is co-financed under the Grant Agreement "2020-1-DE02-KA202-007446" by the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union within the framework of the EU Call for Proposals 2020 "KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices" and "KA202 - Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training" in conjunction with the National Agency Education for Europe at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training