The University of Groningen (RUG) is working
with companies to design a robotic system
that can get a stalled production going again.
by Dick Offringa
The design of such systems and their associated software is less time consuming and costly, says professor of artificial intelligence Lambert Schomaker. He therefore calls upon industry to consider the use of service robots. The professor points out that factory lines sometimes produce only 30 minutes and then fall silent again. This is extremely costly. Prevention of problems, for example by improving the daily maintenance cycle is better and cheaper, Schomaker says. It will ultimately even be possible to use low-cost robots for simple tasks such as cleaning, puffing away dirt with compressed air, and lubrication. To prove his point Schomaker asked his students to write a program. Within three weeks they managed to carry out a simple robotic cleaning and tidying task. Schomaker is involved in the European project Mantis, developing smart predictive maintenance systems. [] Schomaker works on "machine learning" to couple information from sensors to maintenance actions preventing stagnation. The aim is to bring down the cost of production so that our European manufacturing industry can compete with low-wage countries.
Source: Leeuwarder Courant.
Posted on: October 20, 2016