The software behind flexible robots for production and logistics

There is a massive need for robotics in the production and logistics of consumer products, as there is simply not enough workers to do the job. One of these challenges is the large variety in products that a robot needs to handle. This poses tough requirements on the vision system to recognize the products, but also on the grippers and motion planning to grasp the products. State of the art components are barely sufficient, and smart (AI) computer algorithms in combination with human-robot collaboration need to close the loop to realize a viable solution.

To match the process speed, the actions of the robots need to be planned carefully in parallel with each other, generating high demands on the used software components. Due to the complexity, it is infeasible to develop a dedicated system for a single task only, but we need to rely on a platform to exponentially scale to a large variety of applications.