PROFACTOR: Lively Exchanges at "European Robotics Week"

This year saw PROFACTOR again taking part in the fifth EU Robotics Week. On Thursday, 26 November, the doors of the labs at the Technologiehaus Steyr were opened to interested companies and schools. Leading companies including Becom, Doka, Trumpf, Haba, Steyr Motors, voestalpine Stahl, the chair of the VPTÖ and the technical schools in Leonding and Steyr were among those in attendance.

The event motto was "My colleague, the robot", and four presentations showing current research projects were prepared.

"Need a (third) hand?"

The CoBot is a cooperative robot that works with humans in a shared workspace. It helps with assembling jobs and other physical tasks.

"My robot understands me"

PROFACTOR is researching solutions that are capable of interpreting human actions. In this way, the robot can develop an understanding of its environment and collaboration with humans and can react to human actions. This makes smooth cooperation between humans and robots in a shared workspace possible.

"A robot assistant that never loses sight of anything"

So that a robot assistant can work together with humans as far as possible without the need to "tell it what to do", it is important that the robot assistant knows exactly where to find the objects it needs. This is precisely what the technology developed by PROFACTOR achieves. The system recognizes the geometry of any given object in a fraction of a second and then never loses sight of it.

"The measuring robot"

In the FibreMap project, we are conducting research into a more efficient production and better quality control of lightweight components. The robot measures the direction of carbon fibres in lightweight components in 3D to make sure that they can in fact bear the loads that will be placed on them.

Photos: © PROFACTOR GmbH