Enhancing the
efficiency of manufacturing environments and further developing collaborative robots with the ability to interact with humans is one of the priorities of the European Union to boost the construction of
smart factories of the future and to secure competitiveness of the industrial sector.
Against this backdrop, the European project
COROMA was conceived. This project is coordinated by the research centre
IK4-IDEKO and seeks to
develop a robot equipped with cognitive capacities that can run multiple tasks in the field of manufacturing such as drilling, deburring, polishing and even non-destructive inspection work.
The project team aims to achieve a new robot that is able to produce metal or manufactured parts from composite materials and that can interact with both humans and other machines and robots.
Apart from the coordinating entity IK4-IDEKO, the initiative involves another three Spanish companies: the Basque machine tool manufacturer
SORALUCE, the Burgos-based manufacturer of parts for the aeronautical sector
ACITURRI and the Cantabrian manufacturer of parts for nuclear equipment ENSA. The official start of COROMA took place last October 4th at a meeting held at the
Spanish Embassy in Brussels attended by the members of the consortium and hosted by the Counsellor for Cultural and Scientific Affairs of the legation Mr Joaquín Durán Garach.
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The project, with a duration of three years, has a budget of more than 7 million euros and seeks to provide the European tool business with greater flexibility to enable an optimisation of its production capacity in an increasingly more competitive global market in which changes occur at high speed. |
The
COROMA initiative, which ends in October 2019, will be carried out by a consortium involving a total of 16 companies, research centres and universities from 7 different countries.
The project is funded by the program of the European Commission to boost research and innovation called Horizon 2020 and aims to provide an answer to the demand for more potential of robotics by further integration in production environments.
Artificial intelligence, mobility and safety will also play a key role in the project that is aligned with the principles of the public-private partnership Factories of the Future (FoF) to boost innovation and subsequent transfer to the industrial sector. COROMA aims to meet the objectives it has set through advanced information and communication technologies used in the so-called
industry 4.0 or Fourth Industrial Revolution, of which the latest developments in robotics form part.
About IK4-IDEKOIK4-IDEKO is a research centre with its headquarters in Elgoibar, Gipuzkoa, that specialises in manufacturing and industrial production technologies. The centre was created in 1986 to respond to highly technological challenges from the Mondragon Corporation machine tool companies; today it has more than 100 researchers and a portfolio of more than 50 customers a year.
Its R&D&I, aimed at offering differentiating technological solutions to companies to improve competitiveness, is grouped around
seven research lines: Strategic Innovation, Machining and Production systems, Dynamics and Control, Intelligent Software, Manufacturing Processes, Inspection and Measurement and Design and Precision Engineering.
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