Successful developments of young colleagues

Our laboratory pays special attention to provide an opportunity and a up-to-date environment for the representatives of the next generation so that they can gain industrial-like experience along their theoretical education. Thanks to our co-operation with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, project tasks, scientific student research and theses are made with the supervision of our lab’s staff on our research infrastructure, which is constantly being developed together with the students. The talented students who have proven themselves in one of these opportunities will eventually be involved in our research projects.

Our new colleagues' first independent project was to develop an externally controllable logistic system using Festo Didactic Robotino® transport robots to provide a solution to material transportation problems of the laboratory’s SmartFactory cyber-physical sample production system. Their implementation is in accordance with the Industry 4.0 research trends.

Using a web-based prototype dispatcher system, we can send commands to the Robotinos via TCP communication channel manually, or automatically depending on the responses of the other components of SmartFactory. The Robotinos regularly send feedbacks to the server about their current states in a similar fashion. We can also manually request the robots to send us the values of all their sensors and actuators, and also their current positions any time.

The system is optimized for multiple Robotinos working at the same time. During development most important concerns were reliable operation, accuracy, and constant feedback. Great emphasis was also put on creating a system that can be easily implemented in other environments using AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicle).

During the European Robotics Week 2016 (ERW2016) our laboratory will offer an opportunity to meet with the Robotinos and robot arms with gesture control. (18-27 November 2016)