The WIRES Experiment: Tools and Strategies for Robotized Switchgear Cabling

This paper presents the preliminary results obtained within the WIRES experiment. This experiment aims to automatize the switchgear wiring process by using industrial manipulators and properly designed hardware and software tools. The challenging objective of the experiment is the development of a proper computer vision algorithm able to detect the switchgear components and a novel gripper, with an integrated tactile sensor, able to manipulate wires and simultaneously operate on screw/clip type connection points. Another objective of the experiment is the development of a software package able to optimize the wiring sequence and to plan the robot trajectories, based on the CAD data coming from the switchgear design software. The concept of such a software tool is here presented.