REMODEL (Robotic technologies for the manipulation of complex deformable linear objects) project is a four-year project funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 programme. The project consortium involves eleven partners.
REMODEL will enable new production environments, where the manufacturing of complex products composed of multiple wires and cables by means of robots is not only possible, but fully integrated with the product design chain. Wires, cables, wiring harnesses, laces and flexible tubes have a transversal application in many manufacturing processes, where these technologies could lean the scale for a total automation, decreasing the production costs and improving the worker conditions.
REMODEL will bring new opportunities to human-intensive labor manufacturing processes like the one dealing with cables and wires, where the routing and fitting tasks are calling for advanced handling techniques.
The REMODEL robotic ability will impact several production scenarios in which human work is widely adopted due to the complexity in the objects, materials and manipulation tasks, characterized unpredictable initial configuration as well as large deformability and plasticity.
To proof the effectiveness of the REMODEL outcomes, four industrial manufacturing use cases provided by the industrial partners and covering five different domains, i.e. the production and assembly of wiring harnesses in the automotive and the aerospace field, the switchgear wiring and the manufacturing of medical consumables, will be developed.