Abstract
Nowadays, the wire harness assembly process is still manually performed due to the process complexity and product variability (e.g., wires of different kind, size and length). The Wire cobots project, in which this work was conceived, aims at improving the current state-of-art assembly process by introducing in it collaborative robotics. A shared workstation exploiting human abilities and machine strengths was developed to assembly automotive wire harness by means of insulated tape for a real industrial case. In the new workstation, the human deals with the complex task of wire handling, while the robot performs the repetitive and strenuous taping operations. Such a task allocation together with the workstation redesign allow for an improvement of the operator’s well-being in terms of postural conditions and for an increase of the production efficiency. In this paper, the mechanical and mechatronic design, as well as the realization and validation of this new collaborative workstation are presented and discussed.
Highlights
Wire harnesses are used in several industrial fields, such as automotive and machine construction, as well as in information and communication technologies
The workstation was evaluated in terms of satisfaction of the requirements defined in Section 2, whose evaluation is discussed in the following subsections
We describe in detail the technical realization of a collaborative assembly workstation developed for a real industrial case study: the assembly by means of insulated tape of wire harnesses for the automotive sector
Summary
Wire harnesses are used in several industrial fields, such as automotive and machine construction, as well as in information and communication technologies. An experimental robotized wire harness assembly in a car production line is presented in [10,11] These works demonstrate the possibility of automatic handling wires, such a result is obtained employing several sensors including cameras, laser sensors for measuring in real-time the 3D state of the wire harness, and three robot manipulators working cooperatively together. With the Wire cobots project, the authors investigated an alternative solution to a fully automated process for improving the harnesses assemblies in terms of reduction of both cycle time and worker effort Such a solution relies in the development of a humancentered assembling system in which a collaborative robot assists the worker during the stressful operations, overcoming the issues related to both the technological aspects as well as the human occupation of a fully automated solution.
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