THE ARFLEX PROJECT: ADAPTIVE ROBOTS FOR FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

The paper intends to present goals and preliminary results of the ARFLEX Project (Adaptive Robots for Flexible Manufacturing Systems), a three-year project funded by the European Commission aiming at applying the most advanced control technologies to radically innovate a class of products – industrial robots – where these technologies did not yet find full application. The system concept, the optical system and of the new superior level of tool pose control are presented. Calibration issues are discussed in details as well as the development of an embedded solution to be standardized and flexible enough for exploitation and adoption in different robotic applications.