COBOLLEAGUE

Consortium: Robotnik & Eurecat

Project Hashtag: #COBOLLEAGUE

Watch the experiment’s video here.

Overview

COBOLLEAGUE proposes the development of a highly modular collaborative autonomous ground robot equipped with a gravity-compensated mechanism for the autonomous transportation of heavy parts and collaborative handling of heavy tools in construction sites. This proposal is therefore responding to the ESMERA-C.1 challenge “Heavy Tool Carrier in Construction Environment”.

COBOLLEAGUE proposes:

– A supportive collaborative tool that will interact naturally with the worker in a changing environment that poses several challenges to be addressed by the objectives of the project.

– Exploring the possibilities that a robot in a construction site can provide in terms of digitalization, inspection and safety.

– An all terrain modular mobile base ready for modular payloads.

– A gravity compensation mechanism (active or passive weight compensation mechanism) to improve the ergonomy of repetitive tasks

– Autonomous navigation in construction sites, characterized in terms of mobility by uneven terrains, a variety of static and dynamic obstacles at changing locations from one day to another, or even gaps where a human or a robot may fall

– Environment mapping, a complete 3D representation of the environment that can be used to: localize the robot reliably, identify all the obstacles and potential cliffs and gaps where the robot may fall collect data that can later be used together with BIM (Building Information Modeling).

– An advanced human-robot collaboration scheme that includes safety operations towards the worker and the environment an HR Interaction: person following, projection system, gesture detection and voice-based control.

Results:

– New modular automated cost-efficient solution for transporting heavy loads and supporting workers in handling tools.

– Affordable device in a price range of 17.000 – 25.000 euros.

– 5..7% cost reduction: better human resources allocation, reduction in building time, reduction of structural costs, reduction of incidents-related costs.