Project Details
[Return to Previous Page]Robotic Manufacturing
Company: PSU IME Service Systems Engineering 2
Major(s):
Primary: IE
Secondary: CMPSC
Optional: CMPEN, EE, ME
Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO
Intellectual Property: NO
Modern supply chains are becoming increasingly reliant on automation to meet challenges such as staffing shortages, increased customer demand, reduced lead times, and high network complexity. Long term, this project aims to create a fully automated, end-to-end supply chain and manufacturing system on a small, table-top scale. The scale is small to make the system low cost and safe for education and research, while still representing a complete end-to-end supply chain. The final system will consist of multiple robotic manufacturing facilities, autonomous transportation vehicles, automated distribution centers, and overarching cloud-based software. Multiple student project teams will each design, build, and integrate *one* link of this chain through the course of a semester. In this project, the team will produce a single manufacturing facility. This facility should automatically receive material from a transportation vehicle; automatically transport material throughout the production floor and between multiple robotic assembly stations; make use of a previously developed low cost, 3D printed robot arm to perform assembly functions; use IoT sensors and cloud software to monitor material flow, assembly progress, equipment health, and energy usage; efficiently assemble the appropriate subassembly using Lego bricks; automatically load finished products into a transportation vehicle; include control and monitoring software written in Python to be run on a Raspberry Pi; and be setup in the FAME Lab in the Leonhard Building. A documentation package (e.g. schematics, CAD, source code), three (3) fully assembled robot arms, and a functioning but basic vision system will be provided from a previous Capstone project. This semester, the team will pick up the work and fulfill the final vision of a fully automated manufacturing facility. This includes assembling and calibrating the motor controllers; developing a multi-robot strategy for collaborative assembly of the finished goods; programming and testing the vision and control system to perform component recognition, assembly, and error detection; automating the receipt of raw materials and hand-off of finished goods to IME2 for transportation; and complete integration with the cloud for control and monitoring.
