European manufacturing industry faces increasing product variances resulting as a consequence of frequent innovation, short product life cycles, small series production, and shrinking production cycles. At the same time, production cost must be continuously reduced. Agile, transformable and reusable automation and robotics is a key enabler to manage those trends. However, few robotic components are designed for easy adaptation and reuse. To overcome those shortcomings, R5-COP focuses on agile manufacturing paradigms and specifically on modular robotic systems. Based on existing and newly developed methods for a formal modelling of hardware and software components, R5-COP will support model-based design, engineering, validation, and fast commissioning. Furthermore, using existing interface and middle ware standards such as ROS, R5-COP will strongly facilitate integration of components from various suppliers. The proposed modular approach will not only be more flexible than state-of-the-art solutions, but will also reduce design, set up, and maintenance costs. Flexible use of robots naturally includes their close cooperation with humans. Therefore, robustness and safety are crucial requirements which will be assured by dedicated verification and validation methodologies. The formal specification framework will support component suppliers in efficiently verifying and certifying their modules. R5-COP will help to identify and develop reconfigurable key hardware and software components, and to show the feasibility and capability of the approach in living labs in manufacturing and service demonstrator environments.

Description in Czech
Projekt R5-COP se zaměřuje na modulární robotické systémy. Na základě existujících a nově vyvinutých metod formálního modelování hardwarových a softwarových komponent nabídne řešení pro návrh, realizaci, validaci a rychlé zprovoznění takových robotických platforem.

Keywords
robotics, flexible adaptation, human-robot cooperation, modular robotic systems