Knowledge-driven framework for industrial robotic systems

Due to their advantages, there is an increase of applying robotic systems for small batch production as well as for complex manufacturing processes. However, programming and configuring robots is time and resource consuming while being also accompanied by high costs that are especially challenging for small- and medium-sized enterprises. The current way of programming industrial robots by using teach-in control devices and/or using vendor-specific programming languages is in general a complex activity that requires extensive knowledge in the robotics domain. It is therefore important to offer new practical methods for the programming of industrial robots that provide flexibility and versatility in order to achieve feasible robotics solutions for small lot size productions. This paper focuses on the development of a knowledge-driven framework, which should overcome the limitations of state-of-the-art robotics solutions and enhance the agility and autonomy of industrial robotics systems using ontologies as a knowledge-source. The framework includes reasoning and perception abilities as well as the ability to generate plans, select appropriate actions, and finally execute these actions. In this context, a challenge is the fusion of vision system information with the decision-making component, which can use this information for generating the assembly tasks and executable programs. The introduced product model in the form of an ontology enables that the framework can semantically link perception data to product models to consequently derive handling operations and required tools. Besides, the framework enables an easier adaption of robot-based production systems for individualized production, which requires swift configuration and efficient planning. The presented approach is demonstrated in a laboratory environment with an industrial pilot test case. Our application shows the potential to reduce the efforts needed to program robots in an automated production environment. In this context, the benefits as well as shortcomings of the approach are also discussed in the paper.