ROSSINI | RObot enhanced SenSing, INtelligence and actuation to Improve job quality in manufacturing

The ROSSINI project aims to develop a disruptive, inherently safe hardware-software solution for the design and deployment of human-robot collaboration (HRC) applications in manufacturing. By combining innovative sensing, actuation and control technologies (developed by world market leaders in their field), and integrating them in an open development environment, the ROSSINI solution will deliver a set of tools which will enable the spread of HRC applications where robots and human operators will become members of the same team, increasing job quality, production flexibility and productivity.

Thanks to enhanced robot sensing capabilities, the deployment of artificial intelligence to optimise productivity and safety, and natively collaborative manipulation technologies, ROSSINI wants to deliver high performance HRC workcells, combining the safety of traditional cobots with the working speed and payloads of industrial robots.

To reach the above vision, ROSSINI proposes the implementation of a Safety-Aware Architecture concept where a safety layer connects a flexible execution control layer to the HRC interaction block, guaranteeing high performance and safety at the same time. In this perspective, the ROSSINI solution has been defined as a Modular KIT of components aiming at implementing the Sonsidering the following development blocks: 

• SENSING: a high performance Smart and Safe Sensor System for human and robot detection & tracking, capable of quickening sensors response time by 70%
• PERCEPTION, COGNITION and CONTROL: namely, an integrated safety aware control architecture for robot dynamic reconfiguration, capable of reducing robot task execution time by 45%
• ACTUATION: an innovative, collaborative by birth robot manipulator, to be marketed through the ROSSINI platform, capable of increasing the working speed when collaborating with humans by 45%
• HUMAN FACTORS: human factors analysis for mutual predictability of robot and human intentions, capable of increasing job quality index by 15%
• HR CELL INTEGRATION: advanced tools to design a HR cell and ease the needed risk assessment procedures based on new interpretation of collision values, capable of reducing (combined with other results) by 30% the time and cost of reconfiguration, and increasing the allowed robot working speed by 20%

Overall, the ROSSINI modular KIT is made of 16 different components that can be grouped according to four different sets:

• CORE components, that are necessary to build a ROSSINI Platform being fundamental to implement the Safety-Aware Architecture concept
• EXTRA components, that can be useful up to the given application scenarios
• AGGREGATED components, that consist of two or more components to be considered as a whole

In addition to the above, also EXTERNAL components can be identified and integrated to expand a ROSSINI Platform. Here the ROSSINI Platform is defined as an aggregation of all the CORE components developed to implement the Safety-Aware Architecture concept.

Similarly, a ROSSINI Platform Implementation is a suitably configured ROSSINI Platform interconnected with other components (EXTRA/EXT INT) for a given application (use case).

Within the ROSSINI poject, three reearch demonstrators (white goods, electronic equipment, and food packaging) turned out in three corresponding (and very different) ROSSINI Platform Implementations .