At the BMW Group’s plant in Regensburg, Germany, an industrial robot that previously was required to operate inside a fenced area for safety has been adapted with Airskin’s collaborative robot tech. As a result, the robot can now operate without a fence and in collaborative ways with employees.
This KUKA robot is used in seat measurement operations at the BMW plant. Because workers were separated from this robot by fences for safety reasons, any time an employee had to manually correct seats to address measurement errors, those employees had to enter and exit the cell through the safety door, consuming time and energy due to the system’s safety stop.
In addition to interrupting the process whenever workers had to enter the robot work cell, the safety fences took up a lot of space on the already crowded production line.
By implementing Airskin for the robot and the measuring tool, this robotic application can now be operated without safety fences and maintain the highest level of safety. In addition, the seat measurement application’s layout has been changed, improving cycle times by 18 seconds.
According to Airskin, its technology—which fits onto industrial robots—continuously monitors potential collisions and immediately stops the robot when necessary.
See more about Airskin’s technology in this video and article about the company’s work with KUKA.
