Annual Report
PLEASE WELCOME COLLEAGUES CLARA AND CLAUS
Collaborative robots work side by side with their human colleagues at Continental in Babenhausen, Germany. A comprehensive safety solution from SICK ensures that they can work safely with one another.
“Claus, the ‘clever automated universal robot system’, and Clara, the ‘clever automated robot application’, are our semi-mobile light construction robots that do stationary work, but can also be used for mobile tasks,” Heiko Liebisch, Industrial Engineering, Robotics, Continental Automotive GmbH, describes the cobots and their advantages. “This concept enables us to lift the robots and move them elsewhere for another shift, so we can work on two plants with the same robots. At one plant for the early shift, and on a different one for the late or night shift.”
By getting rid of rigidly linked production lines, Continental has increased its productivity in reaction to the increasing variety of models and variants as well as the rising dynamism resulting from shorter product life cycles in the automotive industry. Robots equip the test stands on the new inspection line in Babenhausen by taking a component off the conveyor belt, placing it in the testing machine, removing the tested device again, and putting it on the next conveyor. Workers are busy between the robots, for example, dealing with rejected test pieces. Whereby Claus and Clara always maintain a safety distance to their colleagues. This is ensured by the programmable Flexi Soft safety controller from SICK. “Only when the TR4 Direct coded safety switches are verified do the S300 Advanced safety laser scanners load the stored field sets appropriate for the respective workstation. They must first give the cobot approval before it can load its program and start,” Heiko Liebisch describes initialization.
The safety laser scanners, mounted diagonally for all-round monitoring, show the protective fields and their violation via LEDs with traffic light colors on the front of the devices. In order for the operators to see this even out of the corner of their eyes, the entire body beneath the cobot arm lights up corresponding to the automated color signals. In collaborative mode, Claus turns yellow and reduces speed. In red mode, he stays completely still. When the employee leaves the red protective field, the system automatically restarts and Claus resumes work. No acknowledgement is necessary.
»THIS CONCEPT ENABLES US
TO WORK ON TWO PLANTS WITH THE SAME ROBOTS.«
HEIKO LIEBISCH, INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, ROBOTICS,
CONTINENTAL AUTOMOTIVE GMBH
The team around Heiko Liebisch was advised and trained by SICK regarding the design, regulations, legal requirements, and standards for collaborative robotics. “We are very happy with the system, how it works,” Heiko Liebisch comments on the result. Because high-tech components for car cockpits can thus leave the conveyor system every 15 seconds around the clock at the Babenhausen works. Frequent downtime caused by faults is now a thing of the past. ///
