Connected Autonomy

Connected Autonomy: Manufacturing Applications

Smart Assist for Concrete Delivery (NSF)

Investigating the systematic design and control of a SmartAssist – an intelligent collaborative robot (co-robot) to interactively assist construction workers to dexterously deploy concrete-delivery hoses in congested spaces and support a novel application: 3D printing of concrete. The research, focusing on agile, lightweight, widely deployable low-cost co-robots collocated/working intimately with human workers, is primarily aligned with the NRI research topic of Scalability. The results will enable a fundamentally new capability for engineering with concrete within the construction industry.

Research staff: Dr. Ian Walker, Professor, Dr. Prasad Rangaraju, Dr Venkat Krovi, Dr Matthias Schmid.

Students: Adhiti Raman, Many Srivastava, Abdul Perzada, Ajith Challa, Booshan Deshpande

Pick and Place: Fraunhofer Project

Solving a mundane and physically taxing work of manually loading and unloading of the components which come in various sizes and shapes, on the racks using a robotics solution. The research is focused on having a system’s level approach on current process of loading and unloading the components on the rack and by integrating a pick and place robot within it. the results will enable an improved ergonomics and reliability of the assembly operations.