The competitiveness of the manufacturing industry depends on its productivity, flexibility and agility in responding to market demands. Here, the robots play a key role, especially if they collaborate with human operators in a shared workspace. This represents a paradigm change, which went from autonomous robots to a scenario where robots cooperate with humans, thus taking the most of each other’s capabilities: cognitive abilities (humans) and execution of repetitive tasks (robots).

The ColRobot combines cutting-edge technology developed in Europe and user requirements for assembly processes in order to create an integrated collaborative robotic system, where a mobile manipulator acts as a "third hand", delivering kits, tools, parts, or holding work pieces, while the operator performs tasks. Humans will interact with the ColRobot robots, both cognitively and physically, using gestures, orders and demonstrations.

The robots will be able to navigate the factory independently and will be used in real environment in the automotive and aerospace industry.

CRIIS was represented in the meeting by researchers Germano Veiga and José Lima.

Besides INESC TEC, the partner list also includes the École Nationale Superieure d'Arts et Metiers (coordinator), Centre d'Innovation Technologies des sans Contact EuraRFID (CITC-EuraRFID) AKEO PLUS, RENAULT SAS and Thales Alenia Space (all from France), University of Coimbra (Portugal), Università degli Studi di Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung EV (Germany), Asociación Metallurgical Investigación del Noroeste and Technaid SL ( both from Spain).

The project has a budget of over four million, funded under the H2020 program.

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC.

INESC TEC, March 2016