2022: Testing innovative and tailor-made smart Robot Cell for flexible assembly of electrical devices

Electrical boxes are a consumer product that is used in all buildings. Therefore, their need is extremely high. The Estonian company Coco Corporation OÜ has developed a new unique solution that makes the process of installing them in buildings significantly easier. However, the product itself consists of a sufficiently large number of small parts, which makes their manual assembly error-prone, attention-demanding, routine and also physically taxing. In the project there was tested a solution for the robotic assembly process and a smart robot assembly workplace. Robot assembly simulation and practical implementation of robot screwing proved the feasibility of applying robot assembly to the assembly of electrical boxes. During robot screwing, screwing force and torque control were applied based on sensor data, which ensures the quality of screwing solutions. An AI-based robot vision solution was used to identify the components to be assembled. A comparison of cycle times and takt times showed that limits arise in the robot assembly workplace as production volumes increase. Initially, the solution is offered by the integration and coordinated control of robot-fixture, robot-grippers, robot-camera, input-output positions in the assembly workplace. As production volumes increase (over 2-3 million boxes per year), production based on individual integrated workplaces does not justify itself and then it would be necessary to introduce a complex flexible-automated production line.