Robot as a lab assistant

Jun 17, 2019 | | Sticky post

Application development started in 2013. After meeting with the director of SCHUNK Intec s.r.o. Ing. František Jantoška the idea of ​​using their robot for various interesting applications arises. The deal was that several theses will be written. Matej Bartošovič, Michal Dobiš and Miroslav Kohút participated in the first development. These were the first “ROS people” in our team. They created the first robot control and basic HRI. Patrik Bakyta continued on this work and implemented force-torque control into the control. This work was defended in 2018 as the best thesis in the field of robotics in Slovakia. Deputy of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering – Juraj Slovák is currently working on the robot.

From the neighboring Institute of Electronics and Photonics came the idea of ​​a robot application that could take tubes from the pump and put them in a rack. This is the application you can see in the video below. A new stand is currently being developed, an application is being expanded and a real pump with sampling and subsequent analysis will be added.

In the autumn, we would like to complete the application of this robot in the laboratory allowing the robot to analyze the samples and place them in correct places. What’s beautiful about it? Three STU institutes (ÚRK, ÚEF, ÚAMAI) and the private company SCHUNK cooperate on this. We failed three times with the grant application, so we managed to do so even without state aid.

The robot hardware itself has a Slovak footprint. The robot is equipped with so-called powerball joints. The predecessor of these joints was the so-called powercube on whose development participated PhD. student of prof. Hubinský.

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