SmartManipulator
Autonomous Assistant For Self-Determination
The forecasts for the demographic development of the FRG show a clear trend for the next 50 years. Society is growing significantly older, and the number of people in need of care is rising sharply. At the same time, the number of people in employment is falling, which places tight limits on the desirable expansion of care services.
In the future, service robots should make the work of caregivers easier and increase the independence of people in need of assistance.
In the SmartManipulator project, intelligent forms of connecting manipulator arms as execution units to the remaining system components are being investigated. Existing systems require manual control of the arm using a joystick or similar device. This represents a considerable barrier to use, since precise use of the arm in this way requires a long training period.
The aim of the project is the financially viable addition of a perception and a planning unit to existing systems. This should significantly simplify the control of a manipulator arm and enable commands such as "Give me the apple", "Pour me a glass of water" without having to define exactly what the object looks like or where it is located.
The perceptual unit shall recognize the environment and the associated semantics of the current scenario, thereby labeling and segmenting manipulable objects and obstacles.
The planning unit must find possible trajectories in real time and be modified so that it can be provided with appropriate constraints to adequately process the current task.
The project is coordinated by the University of Applied Sciences Munich, cooperation partners are Automation W+R GmbH and FRANKA EMIKA GmbH. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the funding program "IngenieurNachwuchs 2016" under the funding code 13FH755IX6.
Funding code:
13FH755IX6
Project duration:
01.10.2018 - 30.09.2022
Funding source:
Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF, IngenieurNachwuchs 2016.
Project sponsor:
VDI Technology Center GmbH, Düsseldorf
Project partners:
Automation W+R GmbH Munich,
FRANKA EMIKA GmbH Munich
